Kōhanga reo at 40: The pioneering 'language nest' that helped te reo thrive

Te Pukeatua was the first kōhanga reo established in New Zealand. As it celebrates its 40th anniversary, Bronte Metekingi and Katarina Williams visit the pioneering “language nest” in Lower Hutt.

Aotearoa’s first kōhanga reo opened its doors in Wainuiomata in April 1982 amid growing concern among Māori that te reo usage was depleting.

The Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo was part of a pilot designed to create a generation of children who would grow up speaking their language.

Many Māori were still raw, bearing the scars of the intergenerational trauma after having te reo beaten out of them, stripping them of their identity and breaking the link to their culture.

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In the early 1980s, fewer than 5% of Māori schoolchildren were fluent in te reo.

This coincided with the migration of many Māori from rural lives on Māori pā to urban centres in search of jobs, disconnecting them from both their tikanga and the places where te reo was spoken most freely.

So at a meeting in the early 1980s, about 120 Māori leaders gathered in Wellington to discuss a preschool system where tamariki would be totally immersed in te reo and tikanga. One kuia expressed her desire to “whakahokia te reo ki te ukaipō” – to see the language returned to the breast.

More than 30,000 mostly Pākeha signatories had called a decade earlier for te reo Māori to be actively recognised in Te Petihana Reo Māori (the Māori language petition).

But Māori kaumatua (elders) gathered “to take responsibility” for ensuring the language’s survival, Dame Iritana Tawhiwhirangi told Stuff in 2009.

“We realised we had to stop expecting the Government to revive the language and make it safe; Māoridom had to do it themselves. We’ve got to get these children at birth and their families,” Tawhiwhirangi recalled, soon after she was made a dame.

The kaupapa or philosophy was to use total immersion to feed and nourish tamariki with the reo, with Tawhiwhirangi and Jean Puketapu among the driving forces of the new movement. Puketapu had grown up speaking te reo and was determined her mokopuna (grandchildren) would be given the same opportunity.

Māori travelled from all over the country to see Te Pukeatua in action. When it first opened, Pukeatua was licensed to teach 35 preschoolers, but can now take up to 80 children.

While Te Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo was the first, it didn’t take long for momentum to build. A second kōhanga reo opened a short drive over Wainuiomata Hill at Waiwhetu the following month. Two more were opened in the Wellington region and another in Auckland as part of the pilot programme.

The first kōhanga reo in Te Waipounamu to be registered was Te Kōhanga Reo o Rehua in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) in 1982. The Te Waipounamu head office is now based in the original kōhanga building at Rehua Marae, where the nannies would take care of and teach about 30 tamariki unofficially from 1981.

By 1994, there were 800 kōhanga across the country, according to the census. However, the number had almost halved by 2019, to 444, making up 10% of all early childhood education centres.

The Government says it remains committed to having 30% of tamariki in Māori-medium education by 2040, with kōhanga reo playing a big part in that.

The kōrero that kickstarted a movement

Te Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo trustee Te Awa Puketapu (Te Atiawa, Ngāi Tuhoe, Ngāti Ruapani) – the granddaughter of Jean Puketapu, who died in 2012 – carefully scans the browned pages, some of them sitting loose, in the first kōhanga reo roll book.

Among the columns of neatly presented ticks, notes of fees due and “A’s” noting children’s absences, jumps out the name of former All Black and seven-time Māori All Black halfback Piri Weepu.

Puketapu says many kaumātua had to “buy into this whakaaro, this idea”, to get the movement off the ground.

“Pāpā always talked about, and I always say this, that if it wasn’t for Ngāti Porou, if it wasn’t for Tūhoe kaumātua, kuia, who spoke te reo Māori at the time that the movement was happening here in Wainuiomata, then we wouldn’t have the reo.

“And it was because of the koha that those kuia and koroua brought here – which was te reo – and their kindness and willingness to share that with us, that we still have the reo in such an urban place.”

Those thoughts are echoed by Kuini Garthwaite (Ngāti Porou), now the leader of the Te Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo.

“It’s a part of who we are, and that’s part of what we stand for and what we believe in, and what we want for the generations to come,” she says.

“There was a generation of Māori who did not promote or speak te reo due to their own experiences.”

Te reo isn’t just a language for Māori. It’s a taonga, a part of one’s being. So inextricably linked to one’s sense of self, it is impossible to distil it down to just the spoken word. For Garthwaite, being able to share the reo with tamariki is a way of sharing herself and her identity.

“My reo is mine. It’s my whakapapa. It’s my tīpuna. It’s my kuia. It’s my kaupapa. It’s my heart. It’s my people. It’s precious in the sense that that protection that comes in, it’s about the depths and places that sit in our hearts,” she says.

One generation to lose, three to restore it

Māori Language Commissioner Professor Rawinia Higgins says the creation of Generation One was critically important in efforts to breathe life back into the Māori language.

“While it takes one generation to lose the language, it takes three generations to restore it,” she says.

“Those elders – who were primarily native language speakers themselves – had seen that there hadn’t been opportunities to have the reo, so they were at a point where they got behind the movement of kōhanga reo and supported the creation of this generation of language speakers.”

Associate Education Minister (Māori) Kelvin Davis says kōhanga reo has “played a huge and important role in bringing te reo back into the lives of many”.

“It is fantastic to see te reo grow in Aotearoa and we need to nurture that in our tamariki,” he says.

While kōhanga reo was a vehicle to grow a new generation of native speakers, the philosophy behind the movement was also important – embracing not just the child, but the expectation whānau are active participants in their child’s development.

Aotearoa is now seeing the benefits of that first tranche of kōhanga reo students fully immersed in the language, with Higgins saying many of them are helping to push te reo across all aspects of society.

“If we fast-forward to today, the impact of movements such as this is one in every four Māori children, their first language is te reo Māori. I think that’s a significant uptake, because people recognise its importance.

“One of the things that we don’t often highlight is that kōhanga reo became the model for other indigenous peoples across the world. They looked at the kōhanga reo movement as a way of taking the first steps in their own language revitalisation journey and seeing kōhanga reo setting the standard not just here in Aotearoa, but also globally.”

Recently, Te Pukeatua transported the mauri from the original site in a Fraser St clothing factory to a new multi-level site a short drive away, but still in Wainuiomata, despite reports the country’s first kōhanga reo had closed its doors.

The new, bigger centre means kaiako can cater for up to 80 pēpi and tamariki, with several rooms allocated for play, sleep, learning and sharing kai, as well as a large outdoor area with children’s play equipment and space for children to interact.

For Puketapu, there’s a deep yearning to keep giving back to the movement that has given her so much.

“We’ve always been here, and we always will be. And we are really excited to think about our journey as a kōhanga reo for the next 40 years and how we, as mokopuna of kōhanga reo, give the next generation of kōhanga reo – what we leave for them – as we become tūpuna.”

Te Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo kaiako mātua Harata Donohue (Tūwharetoa, Te Atiawa) says the language is “who we are and who I am”.

“My koro was hushed not to say a word, ‘Don’t speak your language’. Nobody’s going to hush me. And nobody will hush my kids, or hush my mokopuna. It’s our reo. It is to be spoken, it is to forever live, and our kuia and koroua did not go through the fight for us to give up,” she says.