There has been a since the late 1980s.
Author
Chien Ju Ting
Research Fellow, Auckland University of Technology
Aotearoa New Zealand has been at the , earning the admiration of campaigners in other countries, including Taiwan.
Te reo Māori became an official language in 1987. Immersion education is an option for students alongside dedicated Māori news media. Te reo Māori is also increasingly used in mainstream schools, universities and public life.
But the work is not finished. Academics and campaigners have expressed concerns . And the current government has made moves to in official spheres.
New Zealand can learn from the successes and difficulties of countries like Taiwan. The colonial language (Mandarin Chinese) has had dominance in Taiwan for generations, despite efforts to save threatened Indigenous languages, cultures and identities.
The answer for Taiwan – and New Zealand – may lie in supporting the work of grassroots campaigners instead of relying on the government.
The colonisation of Taiwan
Taiwan has 16 Indigenous groups – making up around 2% of the island’s 23.5 million population. Each group has . These languages are believed to be the , encompassing te reo Māori, Hawaiian and several Pacific languages.
The island of Taiwan was governed by mainland China for hundreds of years before being ruled by Japan between the late 19th century and the end of the second world war.
Taiwan became the home of the Kuomintang (KMT) – the Chinese Nationalist government – after the faction lost . The KMT implemented martial law and a Chinese-only language policy. It had a significant impact on the survival of Indigenous languages.
This policy disrupted the sharing of these languages within families, leading to their rapid decline. Mandarin Chinese became the dominant language for communication in all social domains.
While Taiwan was presented to the world as the “democratic China”, there was no democratically elected president until 1996. The election of marked the start of the “Taiwanisation” movement.
In 2016, to the Indigenous peoples on behalf of the government for “four centuries of pain and mistreatment … indigenous peoples’ languages suffered great losses” .
The revitalisation of Taiwan’s languages
While Indigenous peoples welcomed the gesture, the effectiveness of government measures to revitalise Taiwan’s original tongues remains in question.
Taiwan has introduced a series of policies dedicated to bolstering the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. These efforts started with the in 1988 and culminated in the most recent in 2019.
These laws look good on paper and reflect the as a key part of national Taiwanese identity.
However, linguistic analysis of the policies show that ideologically they act to say “we are not China” rather than creating a positive, long-term framework for language revitalisation. The Education Act, for example, introduced “mother-tongue” classes (classes to teach one of the Indigenous languages).
But these classes are plagued by the question: whose mother tongue gets taught?
By the time these classes were introduced, the vast majority of Indigenous families were speaking Mandarin Chinese in the home, the .
Even with the Indigenous Language Development Act in 2017, Indigenous languages continue to decline. A identified six of Taiwan’s Indigenous languages as “critically endangered” and others as “rapidly in decline”.
in any of the Indigenous languages, particularly those with a limited number of speakers, .
Research shows the usual problems of not enough teachers and materials are a smokescreen. The real problem is the pervasive use of Mandarin Chinese in all facets of Taiwanese life and the failure of “mother-tongue classes” to provide any sort of fluency.
Reclaiming indigeneity
What can Aotearoa New Zealand learn from Taiwan’s experience?
Firstly, it is clear policies might just be words if the government isn’t honest about its intentions. found that while the policies are technically for language revitalisation, they are really about enhancing Taiwan’s international reputation and avoiding direct opposition to the one-China ideology.
Additionally, it’s not simple for many Taiwanese Indigenous people to “decolonise” because their families and histories are deeply connected to Taiwan’s past. There’s been intermarriage, urbanisation, relocation and even coercion.
But what Indigenous communities can do is “recolonise indigeneity” by , continuing and .
Indigenous communities also need to be part of policy-making and participants in all political and cultural domains.
Undoubtedly, Indigenous people and their language contribute to national identities. Taiwanese Indigenous people aren’t Chinese, but the question arises – are they Taiwanese? What matters most to them is , standing alongside their non-Indigenous counterparts.
Chien Ju Ting does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
