For purposes external to New Zealand, then, te reo Māori may serve as a national emblem even for that majority of New Zealanders who do not speak it. Within the country itself the standing of te reo may be rather more equivocal. In the mid-1990s I did a research project funded by our national Public Good Science Fund where we conducted repeated indepth interviews with four young New Zealanders, a Māori woman and man, and a Pakeha woman and man.
Something that sociolinguists usually do when interviewing people is give them lists of carefully chosen words to read aloud with the aim of eliciting pronunciations of particular sounds. The topic of discussion in one of these interviews was ethnic relations in New Zealand, and this is one the lists of words we gave them to read (Bell 2001a):
marae kiwi mana
one hoe toe
take ate pane
pure nuke
hope no
Here is how the young Pakeha man we interviewed read them:
Māori/English doublets: Pakeha male reader
A good, straight, competent reading, no ifs and buts, no issues. But this speaker had not noticed that the list offered pronunciation choices. Here by contrast is the Māori woman:
Māori/English doublets: Māori female reader
Apart from the three 'cue’ words marae, kiwi and mana, what we have here are Māori/English doublets - words which could be either Māori or English because they share the same spelling (as long as length macrons are discounted) but not the same pronunciation or meaning (Bell 2001a). All but one word (no) are pronounced as one syllable in English but two syllables in Māori, and the vowel and consonant qualities are different in the two languages. The Pakeha man read them straight through as English words. The other three speakers quickly realized something was going on and began giving either Māori or English readings or both, and commented on the issue this raised. The Māori woman said after reading the list: 'I’d like to hear some of the others read these', indicating she recognized this as a site of ethnic distinction and struggle, just like use of the word 'Pakeha’ itself. This list then offers socially meaningful choices indexing speakers’ degree of sensitivity to Māori language and culture, whether that is their own or another’s.2
Te reo in court
One of my main involvements with te reo Māori has been as an expert witness in court cases. For 10 years I worked with the Māori advocacy groups which took legal cases against the Government trying to require that it support and promote Māori language through broadcasting (Bell 2005). It was a privileged opportunity for me to be able to turn my experience and expertise in language and broadcasting to the service of supporting the reo. I pay tribute to the New Zealand Māori Council and the Wellington Māori Language Board for the persistence of their advocacy over a decade.
The cases argued that under the Treaty of Waitangi the Government was obliged to actively protect and promote te reo as a taonga, a treasure. The relevant clause of the Māori version of the Treaty reads, with an English translation below:
Te Tiriti o Waitangi:
Ko te Tuarua
Ko te Kuini o Ingarani ka wakarite ka wakaae ki nga Rangitira ki nga hapu - ki nga tangata katoa o Nu Tirani te tino rangatiratanga o o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa.
Treaty of Waitangi:
Modern English translation of the Māori text
The Queen of England agrees to protect the chiefs, the subtribes and all the people of New Zealand in the unqualified exercise of their chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures.
The cases went right up to the Privy Council (the highest court of New Zealand at the time) and they were in the end all lost, but the wording of the judgments handed down was such that the Government was in fact required to take action for the language. Two of the key statements on te reo Māori were:
Waitangi Tribunal 1987, confirmed by Court of Appeal 1992:
The word 'guarantee’ meant more than merely leaving the Māori people unhindered in their enjoyment of language and culture. It required active steps to be taken to ensure that the Māori people have and retain the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their language and culture.
Lord Woolf, Privy Council, 1995:
Foremost amongst [the] principles are the obligations which the Crown undertook of protecting and preserving Māori property, including the Māori language as part of taonga, in return for being recognised as the legitimate government of the whole nation by Māori.
The end result a further decade later was Māori Television, whose establishment itself created a case study in ethnic struggle. But in fact my principal argument in these court cases had not been to push for a stand-alone Māori TV channel at all, although I am pleased that one was set up. I favoured rather the mainstreaming of te reo Māori and I still do - that on mainline New Zealand television there should be a minimum amount of Māori language programming. I argued that such provision could be crucial to the survival of this endangered language.
The reason I argued this was that such placement foregrounds and showcases the language to the people of this country at large. The most important requirement for te reo Māori or any minority, endangered language is its prestige in the eyes of its own speakers and its hearers. Mainstream broadcasting has always been a domain of language prestige, and usage of Māori there says to te reo speakers, 'your language is worth hearing, your language is worth speaking’.
The formula I suggested was that in prime time there should be a minimum of half an hour Māori language programming screened each night on each of the three main broadcast channels, like this:
Half an hour
per channel (3)
per night (7)
in prime time.
That would add up to a total of 10½ hours of programming per week, and I believe that if there was the political and commercial will the practical challenges of undertaking this could be overcome. But it did not happen and unfortunately we are no nearer such an outcome than we were 10 years ago when the court cases concluded. So although I applaud the fact and performance of Māori Television I regret the continued scarcity of te reo on the mainstream broadcast channels.3 | 
