Opinion - Writer and teacher
Leki Jackson-Bourke questions what else can be done to keep Pacific mother tongues alive in addition to language weeks in Aotearoa. And he shares his own personal journey of language learning with the Pacific Cooperation Foundation s (PCF)
Pacific Voices series, as the Aotearoa Languages Weeks begin with a week long celebration of the Rotuman language.
A Niuean takalo challenge.
Photo: Pool photo / New Zealand Herald / Michael Craig
We dress up, we wave our flags, we copy and paste from the latest templates to decorate our auto-generated email salutations.
But is that it? How much value and mana do we actually place on our languages? Are we at risk of turning our cultures into a one-week parade with hashtags and hype?