Celebrating 50 years since the petition was delivered to Parliament. Photo /Supplied
Celebrating 50 years since the petition was delivered to Parliament. Photo /Supplied
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The Māori Language Petition was driven by the mana of some of Te Ao Māori's most esteemed rangatahi groups including Ngā Tamatoa,Te Reo Māori Society and Te Huinga Rangatahi who delivered the boxes of signed papers to Parliament on September 14 1972.
Eighteen-year-old Whaimutu Dewes from TRM and his sister Cathy Dewes were also some of the movement's pioneers.
Dewes said it was like a "military procedure".
"My sister was our commander. She had the maps, she had the teams. She instructed the streets to go down and who to go with. We weren't to go anywhere on our own," he said.
At the time, Dewes was in his early years of law school which put him in charge of "what we'd call these days, logistics".
He says aside from taking care of the legislative processes, he was also continually making sure everyone was okay, with cups of tea.
"I remember riding around on my motorbike in the pouring rain. We had to make sure everyone was alright. That was a big job too because everyone had a part to play at the steps of parliament," he said.
And Dewes says once they were there, the pitch was simple.
The document expressed that te reo Māori was a valuable taonga for the country and should be available to all New Zealanders.
"We the undermined, do humbly pray that courses in Māori language and aspects of Māori culture be offered in all those schools with large Māori rolls and that these same courses be offered, as a gift to the Pakeha from Māori."
The protest is taken to Parliament to save the Māori language. Photo / Supplied
However, according to Willie Jackson, this taonga is yet to be accepted by some people who aren't Māori.
"Some of their ideas are just different, aye, there are some who are persistent at looking down on our reo and kaupapa but hopefully one day that will change."
Within 4 years, the language movement had achieved many of its goals at a startling rate, with the introduction of Māori in primary and secondary schools and the offering of a course to train teachers.
This was a big deal in the 1970s, since there was still no law governing language instruction stating that languages could only be taught in secondary schools if they were also taught in primary schools.
"So not only did you have zero at the second level but you didn't have any feeders. So that's why we thought, 'well, we got to change that'."
Kura kaupapa, whare wananga and kohanga reo were established in 1971, 1981 and 1982.
Bilingual schools and units within mainstream schools still only provide access to the language to roughly 10 per cent of Māori children.
Ninety per cent still remain in mainstream, where the Māori language and 'taha maori' components are important but at the same time minimal and marginalised to afternoon classes when children are less alert.
Dewes says there was little awareness of how inaccessible the Māori language was back in those days, even by Māori.
Media coverage was too expensive, in fact TRM had to pay the NZBC $1 per word to say 'kia ora' on morning programmes.
"We had to raise good money to pay for the newspaper.
''We were students and many of us had to pay our board and tertiary fees so it was all done by the smell of an oily rag. We purchased phrases on the radio but had to record them ourselves because the broadcasters couldn't."
The lack of publicity combined with the shared agreement to avoid protesting meant that TRM weren't really seen as a threat.
