Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
There are now more te reo Māori speakers than ever before despite concern over the low percentage of Māori conversing in their own language.
Data from the 2023 Census shows that more than 200,000 people - or 4.28 percent of Kiwis - can hold a conversation in te reo.
Up 15 percent over the last five years it is New Zealand's second most widely spoken language.
Nonetheless, advocates are concerned that as a percentage of the population, the growth of Māori speakers of te reo has slowed.
When data on iwi members was released earlier this month it showed the overall percentage of Māori te reo speakers has remained basically unchanged, with 18.4 percent in 2013 and 18.6 percent in 2023.
Te reo Māori educator Rawiri Wright was not surprised that growth has slowed. He said it has been a concern of his for a while.
Te reo was at its lowest point just before World War II - when only 30,000 people could speak it - and it has been clawing its way back ever since, he said.
"Numerically, there are more speakers of Māori now than there probably have ever been, but my concern is those of us who are Māori who have our own language because it is our birthright."
Athough population growth was part of the slowdown the lingering effects of colonisation were the reason so many Māori did not speak te reo, Wright said.
"Māori as a population, we are almost a million people now and there was a time when 100 percent of Māori people spoke Māori, and that was 1769."
Wright said te reo was still in a fragile state and the coalition government's policies could undermine the vitality of te reo Māori throughout the nation.
Lead technician for Te Kāhui Raraunga - which publishes iwi affiliation and Māori descent data - Kirikowhai Mikaere advised caution in interpreting the data due to a change in methodologies used by the Census to count people, between 2013 and 2023.
She encouraged Māori to look at the number of speakers rather than the percentage.
"Because our populations have grown incredibly over the last ten years it often doesn't look like different areas have grown in terms of proportion, but numbers wise they have grown. There are some really encouraging stories and insights for iwi to find in the data."
Te reo avocate Pania Papa said it was difficult to know if the statistics truly reflected the everyday context of te reo speakers.
In fact 2018 Census saw such a poor response rate among Māori that no official iwi statistics were able to be released from it.
She said she was seeing a lot of interest in te reo not just from Māori.
"I think that it's becoming much more visible despite some of the decisions of late of the government there is still a huge support out in Aotearoa whānui, in the wider New Zealand society for te reo Māori to be used much more normally and naturally in our everyday lives."
Papa believed that te reo was on the rise.
"We can only go upwards I think from where we are and where we have come from. And the next generations of speakers will be much more diverse I think from what we've been used to in the past."
The latest data release from Te Kāhui Raraunga backs that up - showing that 49 percent of iwi individuals who could kōrero Māori in 2023 were tamariki, rangatahi and young adults aged under 30.
