Presents the results of a survey which aims to reflect the current lifestyle and future aspirations including health, cultural activities and employment of Māori in NZ.

Presents the results of a survey which aims to reflect the current lifestyle and future aspirations including health, cultural activities and employment of Māori in NZ. Also provides a baseline for future research.

In recent decades, New Zealand Maori have made huge efforts to reinvigorate their language (te reo) and the life of tribal meeting places (marae) as the twin cornerstones of Maori identity. Maori television and radio stations have been set up, a Maori Language Commission established, and language emersion early childcare centers (kohanga reo), schools (kura kaupapa), and universities (wananga) have emerged. But despite these efforts, te reo and tribal marae today seem to be in crisis: the number of children in kohanga reo is down 34 percent from its peak, only 15 percent of Maori children are attending Maori-medium schooling, and fewer and fewer people are participating in marae activities. Without a living language spoken regularly on the marae or in everyday lives, what does the future hold for Maori and for the nation of Aotearoa New Zealand? Focusing on the northern tribal district Tai Tokerau as a case study but with conclusions applicable across the country, the leading Maori scholars and elders in Maranga Mai! ask these key questions and pose potential solutions. The chapters provide personal accounts and stories, statistics, demography and policy questions, and present important challenges for current and new generations of leaders to resolve.

This book draws together many previously published articles and book chapters produced by the author over the past 20 years of work in the field of indigenous education. However, rather than just being a compilation of a series of papers, this book is a record of the development of an indigenous approach towards large-scale, theory-based education reform that is now being implemented, in two different forms, in almost half of the secondary schools in New Zealand. Fundamental to this theorising is the understanding, identified by Paulo Freire over forty years ago, that answers to the conditions oppressed peoples find themselves in is not to be found in the language or understandings of the oppressors. Rather, it is to be found in those of the oppressed. This realisation has been confirmed by the examples in this book. The first is seen where it is identified how researching in Maori contexts needs to be conducted dialogically within the world view and understandings of Maori people. Secondly, dialogue in its widest sense is crucial for developing a means whereby Maori students are able to participate successfully in education. The book details how researching the impact of colonization on his mother’s Maori family enabled the author to develop a means of researching within indigenous, Maori contexts. It then details how the lessons learnt here appealed as being a means by which the marginalization of Maori students in mainstream, public school classrooms could be re-theorised, and how schools and education systems could be reorganised so as to support indigenous students to be successful learners.