Maori: children lead the way: over the last two decades the Maori people of New Zealand have found new confidence through a movement which runs `language nests' for pre-school children

For A Change, June-July, 1997 by Mary Lean

These developments have also plunged Kohanga Reo into what Iritana Tawhiwhirangi calls `social economics'. `We've had this left/right argument in New Zealand, social factors against economic ones. But Maoridom has always seen them as related.' Unable to find an insurance package suitable to its properties, Kohanga Reo set up its own insurance group. It has since expanded into health insurance, after discovering how many kohanga children were waiting for surgery, particularly for ear problems. `Many of our young people in prisons and institutions have hearing problems,' comments Tawhiwhirangi.

Satellite TV

Every kohanga now contributes $25 per child to the Trust's health insurance fund, which covers doctor's visits, prescriptions, specialists, surgery and hospitals. In the fund's first year (1994-5), it dealt with 16,000 claims, and in its second, 40,000. As the contributions from the kohanga nowhere near meet the bill, the fund is hoping for government assistance. Meanwhile, business is getting in on the act. Toyota, Ford, Mobil, Panasonic and Telecom all now offer discounts to kohanga and make contributions to the Trust's education fund. These contributions have done `a great deal to promote racial harmony', says Tawhiwhirangi.

Her latest departure is information technology. When we met, she was working on improving communication between the Trust's headquarters and kohanga around the country. Plans were afoot to install computers, with e-mail facilities, in every kohanga, and the possibilities of satellite TV were also being explored.

Looking back over the years at Kohanga Reo's achievement, Tawhiwhirangi draws a diagram. At the top and the bottom are thin lines, representing the two age groups with no problem about identity--the very old and the very young. In the middle is the majority of the Maori population, so often written off as a problem. Sharing their language and culture with the children brought alive dormant skills in the old, she says: `many of them died on a high'. And in the process, they helped to rebuild the confidence, self-worth and initiative of the generations in between. Small wonder that one of Tawhiwhirangi's watchwords is `the child shall lead the way'.