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This section of the report provides an overview of Māori language statistics for these regions including numbers of Māori language speakers and Māori language proficiency levels.
In the 2006 Census, 62,292 people living in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu identified as Māori, with 16,503 of these people saying they were able to converse in Māori ‘about a lot of everyday things’.2 This results in a Māori language rate of 26%. This rate is slightly higher than the national rate of 23%. For adults (people aged over 15), the Māori language rate is 30%, or 11,800 people within the Māori adult population of 40,000 in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu.
Source: HML 2006 Survey
Figure 1 shows the Māori language rate has fallen since 2001. The information available suggests this reflects two demographic trends. First, there is a gradual passing of an older generation of Māori adults that has significantly higher proportions of Māori language speakers than other generations (the language rate of those aged over 55 is about double that of each of the younger generations). Second, the Māori population is youthful (the median age in 2006 was 22 years). Because most Māori learn the Māori language as adults, the younger average-age of the Māori population will have the effect of reducing the overall Māori language rate.
Te Puni Kōkiri commissioned two surveys investigating the health of the Māori language, undertaken in 2001 and 2006. The HML surveys provide another means of measuring the number of Māori adults with Māori language skills. The surveys investigated proficiency in the Māori language in more depth than the Census, by looking at speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills, and also a combination of these skills, on a proficiency scale. The surveys also investigated how people acquired their Māori language skills, and when and where they use these skills.3 As the Census and the HML surveys provide information on different aspects of the health of the Māori language, both are drawn upon in this section.
The HML 2006 Survey found 10% (around 4,000) of Māori adults in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu have high levels of Māori language speaking proficiency. A further 19% (7,700 people) are able to speak Māori ‘fairly well’. For the repeat of the Census question on conversational abilities, the survey found the Māori language rate was 27% (10,600 adults). The abilities of children and young people were not measured in the survey, so differences between the 2006 Census and HML 2006 Survey data can only be considered for the adult population.
The reason there are differences in measuring the number of Māori adults with Māori language skills is that both the HML surveys and the Census are based on individuals assessing their own language abilities, and at different times people have different views on their Māori language skills. A key factor that is likely to have influenced people in assessing their skills is the different approaches used to collect data for the Census and the HML surveys.
The HML surveys involved face-to-face interviews, in either Māori or English, specifically focusing on Māori language competencies. The Census involved people completing a questionnaire on their own, and did not investigate Māori language in detail. Also, the Census question was general in nature and more open to different interpretations. Due to these differences, it is likely that the HML surveys provide a more accurate picture of the number of people with strong competencies in the Māori language, while the Census captures a wider group of people with some level of conversational Māori language skills.
Overall then, the range of Māori language speakers is between 10% and 30% for Māori adults in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu, with the lower end of this range being perhaps a more accurate indicator of strong proficiency.
Census data from 2006 shows there are significant differences in the proportion of the Māori language speakers across age groups. For those people aged up to fifty-five, the Māori speaking rate is 24%, whereas for those people fifty-five or older the rate is 43%.
While having the highest proportion of speakers, the older generation is a small group – around 6,900 people, with approximately 3,000 Māori language speakers (which is 18% of all Māori speakers in the regions). Because of this there are actually more Māori speakers in each of the younger age groupings, as is shown in Table 1.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the age profile of Māori language speakers is gradually changing. In particular, since 2001, the percentage of speakers in the 55 or above age group has fallen by 12 percentage points (from 55% to 43%), reflecting the passing on of older native speakers and the passage of people with lower levels of Māori language proficiency into this age group.
Source: Census 2006.
Māori women are slightly more likely to speak Māori than Māori men, with 54% of the Māori language speakers being women in Te Tairāwhiti and Tākitimu. There is little change from this pattern throughout the age groups.
Māori speakers in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu associate with a wide variety of iwi. Table 2 lists the ten iwi residing in Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu with the highest te reo Māori conversant populations.
Another way of looking at Māori language speakers for the iwi of Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu is to consider the number of speakers belonging to an iwi from Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu that reside across the entire country, as shown in Table 3. Because many people affiliate with more than one iwi, some speakers will be included in a number of iwi groupings.
The Māori language is still very much a language of a small minority within the entire population of Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu. Census 2006 data shows only 7% of the region’s total population have conversational abilities in the Māori language. This is comprised of the 16,503 speakers who are Māori, together with another 2,121 non-Māori who can converse in Māori, giving a total of 18,624, within a regional population of around 248,451.
Table 4: Numbers of Māori speakers
There are regional variances in the Māori language rate. Census 2006 data shows that the proportions of Māori speakers are generally highest in the northern regions. Te Tairāwhiti/Tākitimu has the third highest Māori language rate of the eight regions.
