Language rights matte in New Zealand and in Scotland

With this iconic gesture, now viral online and highly memed, Hana-Rāwhiti (whose name is now also a hashtag) showed the world – but especially the leader of New Zealand’s far-right coalition – exactly what a great number of people think about his Treaty Principles Bill.

This bill – opposed by 43 of New Zealand’s KCs and more than 400 faith leaders – will seek to limit, among many other things, the bi-cultural, co-governance relationships with Māori, (indigenous people and founders of this state) and to limit the use of the Māori language, Te Reo Māori, in the public domain, inflicting great harm on the astonishing efforts and success of language revitalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, and to the people, te tangata.

READ MORE: Authors call for anti-Scottish prejudice to be treated more seriously

There is much controversy about the exhibition of the Treaty of Waitangi – O Te Tiriti Waitangi – hanging in Te Papa, the National Museum in the capital, Wellington.

It was the subject of direct action in 2023 after repeated requests to provide accurate translations and end the “vague washing” of the ways the museum exhibited the Treaty. The action was documented by Te Waka Hourua, a climate and social justice group, in a recent book.

The treaty exists, in te reo (Māori) and in English. They are not translations of each other but have important distinctions and points of agreement. They form the basis of bi-cultural principles laid down in 1840 and affirmed in law in 1975 by which the people can live with difference and similarity.

Some (not all) of the Māori chiefs and the representatives of the Crown met at Waitangi, in Te Ika-a-Māui/North Island, and signed treaties, in either te reo or in English. Sovereignty was never ceded. While the treaties are not translations of each other, there are overlaps and so it is that, after a resurgence of understanding of the extent of the breaches of O Te Tiriti by the Crown, a struggle for the indigenous rights, cultural rights, land rights and language rights of Māori have been part of an extraordinary, inspiring and critical movement here.

The variant of English spoken in Aotearoa is peppered with words in Māori, and when the Māori language is spoken, it is with occasional English nouns and inflections. Here is a people trying to live a life according to bi-cultural governance principles.

Last week I went to a rally in Ōtepoti (Dunedin) supporting the Hīkoi, a march in Wellington.

The march carries the spirit that seeks to honour the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, lending solidarity to the people of Aotearoa, tāngata Tiriti (non-Māori people striving to honour Te Tiriti) and Māori alike, who are united in opposition to the far-right ACT Party’s introduction of the Treaty Principles Bill. I sat on the grass with at least 500 people at the Honour Treaty/Toitū Te Tiriti protest, part of a movement I’ve lent support to for many years. MP Tākuta Ferris said: “This is all of our fight. There are no excuses anymore. Learn the language. Learn the history. Te Tiriti is a constitutional document.”

His call is for a deep education and a dreaming back of all that has been invisibilisedmade invisible and eroded. It’s clear from the crowd, the haka, karakia and waiata – the prayers and songs – that this is a strong movement, defiant and not going away.

“It is a disgraceful misuse of parliamentary process to deliberately inflict harm on a people under its care,” Aaron Hawkins of the New Zealand Green Party says. He explains how abusive this is.

I recall the hideous experiences of the Illegal Migration Bill and Safety of Rwanda Bill in the UK – both largely unimplementable pieces of legislation which did enormous harm to vulnerable people.

Dr Piki Diamond, an expert on Te Tirirti practices in organisations, tells me that what is important, aside from the abusive procedures and the movement to defend language and cultural rights, is that Te Tiriti Treaty itself is peace-making.

“What Te Tiriti is, is peace,” she says. “It’s a way of peace-keeping, and time and time again Māori ways of being and doing, of healing and doing peace, in many facets, have been welcomed by those who don’t want to go down a capitalist pathway, and who aren’t served by capitalism anymore, if they ever were.”

In our work with Diamond in the Unesco Chair at the University of Glasgow, bi-cultural principles have, she says, “been picked up by non-Māori, and by those who were fearful of the unknown, and have learnt come to know it is peacekeeping and that was why it was developed, to keep that balance, that peace”.

This defiant, inspiring movement for the cultural and language rights for the people of Aotearoa New Zealand – who are all People of the Treaty/Tangata Te Tiriti – has much to teach us in Alba Scotland.

We all need to expand our minds from the divisive politics of either/or into ways of being bi-cultural that cannot be reconciled but can, as the late Māori king Tūheitia Paki believed, exist as “Māori” or as “Galgael” – people from here and people from elsewhere – every day.

Language rights matter. It’s why Unesco instituted a day on February 21 as Mother Language Day – in honour of the Bangladesh language martyrs, students killed for insisting on the right to use their mother language, Bangla, in 1952. The eradication of a language, its prohibition, its denigration, its excising, and the picking over documents which uphold cultural rights, is a strategy used again and again by dominant groups to create division and cultural wars, as well as violence in many forms.

It does great violence to a people to take away their means of expression, their means of remembering, their understanding of the places they live and that speak through the namings of the past.

READ MORE: Ashley Storrie pays tribute to Janey Godley in Bafta Scotland speech

It does great violence to all of humanity. To be multilingual, all the research shows, is to have enhanced functions and capacities for empathy, peace-making, understanding.

And it is a vital element in being able to live your life as a person of the land.

It is why the use of Gaelic place names and the work of revitalising and learning Gaelic are vital to the people of Scotland.

The almost extinction of Gaelic has done enormous harm to the people of Scotland, and the example of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, on governance, bi-culturalism and language revitalisation is an important one in the struggle for rights and recognition.

We have much to learn.

Alison Phipps is Unesco Chair for Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and Arts at the University of Glasgow