Maori was the first language understood by all but two of the people we interviewed. The same number told us they also prefer using Māori for conversations although most people preferred English for reading and writing in these communities, Maori was very much a living language and used on an everyday basis by a large number of the people we visited. It seemed that nearly everyone who had Maori as a first language could still speak it fluently, despite three fifths of our informants being punished at school for speaking Maori."
Te Moana-ā-Toi | Bay of Plenty | Whakatāne | 1970-75 | 5% of Māori children can speak te reo. (1970-75) | Story is by tangata whenua
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