Maori language television makes it (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Maori language television makes it
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2004/3/26/latest/16616Maorilang&sec=latest

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - The indigenous Maori language was banned
in New Zealand schools from the 1880s and now is spoken by only one in
10 Maoris, but its supporters believe the launch of nationwide Maori TV
broadcasts will help ensure its survival.

After 16 years of struggle and controversy, the new taxpayer-funded
Maori Television Service, or MTS, begins operation Sunday.

Its first broadcasts coincide with a bitter debate in New Zealand over
race relations sparked by a pledge by opposition National Party leader
Don Brash to end preferential government treatment for Maori ranging
from welfare payments to funding for the new TV network.

A National Party spokesman said the party likely would pull the plug on
the new channel if it wins power in elections next year.

"I don't see MTS as having a long life,'' the party's Maori affairs
spokesman, Gerry Brownlee, said this week.

Opponents have fought the project since the country's highest court
ruled in 1991 that the government had a legal responsibility to fund
Maori TV to protect the language under a 1840 treaty between Maori and
British settlers.

Since then, every step of the fledgling TV service's creation has been
dogged by controversy.

Its first appointed chief executive, Canadian John Davy - who spoke no
Maori and had no knowledge of the culture - was jailed in 2002 and
later deported for false claims about his credentials for the job.

Earlier efforts to run a private Maori TV channel ended in bankruptcy
after it squandered millions of dollars of taxpayer cash.

There was outrage when it was revealed one of its directors used
taxpayer money to buy 85 New Zealand dollar (US$55) pairs of silk boxer
shorts.

Maori are among New Zealand's least-educated, least-healthy and
worst-housed citizens, have high unemployment levels and fill more than
half the nation's prison cells.

Their language, spoken by less than 10 percent of the nation's 530,000
Maori, was only recognised as an official national language alongside
English in 1987.

Maori elder and academic Huirangi Waikerepuru led the fight for its
recognition, which spawned the 1987 Maori Language Act and paved the
way for Maori language schools and Maori radio stations.

"The launch of Maori television is yet another milestone for us and our
language,'' Waikerepuru said this week.

"My being at the launch will be out of respect for the kuia and koroua
(elderly women and men) who told ... their stories of being punished at
school for speaking their native tongue,'' Waikerepuru said.

Legislation setting up the new channel requires Maori to be used in at
least 50 percent of its programming. It plans to eventually subtitle
all programs to make them accessible to non-Maori.

It promises a broad range of programs, including dramas, entertainment,
cooking shows and a daily news hour focusing on Maori issues.

Even its weather bulletins will be different - looking not only at
temperatures and storm patterns but also at tides and good times to
fish and work in the garden.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said the service should be judged on its
merits, not its turbulent past.

She said despite the problems, other minority groups around the world
had found that to keep a language alive they needed a voice on
television.

Associate Maori Affairs Minister John Tamihere, a Maori, said the
channel will be a "powerful voice for Maori. I am very pleased that
voice will be a bilingual one.''

He said he hopes the new channel will help end some of the "ignorance
and misunderstanding'' about Maori issues fueling the nation's
acrimonious race relation debate. - AP