Igniting the spark: How to achieve collective ownership of a tribal language revitalisation strategy

Abstract

The Kāi Tahu tribal language Strategy, Kotahi Mano Kāika, Kotahi Mano Wawata – A thousand homes, a thousand dreams, is now in its 11^th year and has recently been internally reviewed.  As a tribe we remain in the position of a people whose language is in the worse state of all tribes in New Zealand and we are far from achieving a level of sustainability in our efforts.

The greatest challenge we have faced and continue to face, is the engagement of the majority of our kin who are non-language speakers in our revitalisation effort, and this includes a significant proportion of our tribal governance.  As the language continues to take 2^nd place to the wider social and political issues facing the tribal collective, the task of revitalisation becomes increasingly challenging and esperate.

This paper will discuss the strategies that have been used over the past 10 years to achieve collective ownership of our language revitailstion effort and will look the challenges ahead of us as a tribe and as language communities to achieve language sustainability for our people and future generations.