Maori Tabu!

in Cook Islands Schools

Letter to the Editor IT is not generally known, even by those who know the Islands well, that the language spoken in the Cook Islands is Maori, practically identical with the language spoken by the natives of New Zealand. It is over 600 years since the expedition which colonised New Zealand left the Cook Islands; but the language, through the centuries, has changed sur prisingly little and a New Zealand Maori can converse quite well with the natives of the Cook Islands. A thousand miles further east, in Tahiti and the Society Group, a similar language is spoken; it is like a dialect of Maori.

All students of Polynesia agree that Maori is a beautiful language, both in sound and in structure, and well worthy of preservation. You can imagine my astonishment and disgust, therefore, when on a recent visit to the Cook Islands I discovered that the education authorities there refused to allow Maori to be spoken in the schools. Can you imagine a more ridiculous thing?

It is, of cource, quite right and proper that the Cook Island natives should be taught to speak and write in English—but what is wrong with permitting the Cook Island natives to be bi-lingual, as is the case in so very many other parts of the British Empire?

They will be bi-lingual in any case, in sofar that they must speak their language —but why should they not be taught to read and write in their beautiful Maori tongue, as well as in English.

I am, etc.,

Pro-Polynesian.

Auckland, N.Z., 14/12/’39.