🕘 Lesson at a Glance | Te Hōtaka
Lesson Overview | Tirohanga Whānui
This is the lesson where the unit's frame does real work. In 1972 a petition asking that te reo Māori be taught in schools was delivered to Parliament with more than 30,000 signatures. That is the event. But the interesting history is what happened to the claim afterwards — because the same goal was pursued through three different kinds of claim, and they did not all work the same way.
First it was put to the state as a request about schooling. Then, in 1985, it was put to the Waitangi Tribunal as a Te Tiriti claim — that te reo is a taonga the Crown had guaranteed to protect. And alongside both, whānau simply started kōhanga reo without asking anyone's permission at all.
Students meet named people and named groups — not “Māori activists” — and they classify each move using the four questions from Lesson 1.
Learning Intentions | Ngā Whāinga Ako
- Describe who organised the 1972 te reo Māori petition, what it asked for, and when it was delivered — using named people and groups.
- Explain why the loss of a language became a political claim and not only a cultural loss.
- Classify three moves in the te reo story by the kind of claim each one made, and explain what changed as a result of each.
⚡ Do Now · The thing you would lose
⏱ 5 minThink of something you can do because of the language you grew up speaking — a joke you understand, a song, the way your family says something that does not translate.
Run it
- Write (2 min): one specific example. Not “my culture” — one specific thing.
- Extend (2 min): if that language disappeared in two generations, what exactly would be gone? List three things. At least one of them should not be a word.
- Turn (1 min): whose job would it be to stop that happening?
Activity 1 · Who Actually Did This
⏱ 12 minWhat it is: explicit teaching. The people in this story have names, and students should leave able to use them. Hand out the source lab.
Her own words. This is a real quotation, from Hana Te Hemara Jackson’s submission on the petition. Put it on the board:
“the only real symbol of Māori identity … For us to be able to speak Māori is the truest expression of our Māori tanga. It is the substance of our Māori tanga. It is our link with the past and all its glories and tragedies. It is our link with our tīpuna.”
— Hana Te Hemara Jackson, submission on the 1972 Māori language petition, as reproduced by NZHistory and Te Ara from the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ko Aotearoa Tēnei (Wai 262), volume 2, page 395. Spelling and spacing follow the source.
Run it
- Read (4 min): in pairs, read the six cards on the source lab. For each one write, in three words, what this person or group did.
- Ban the phrase (3 min): the phrase “Māori activists” is now banned in this classroom for the rest of the unit. Rewrite this sentence without it: “Māori activists campaigned for te reo Māori in the 1970s.” Use at least two names.
- Notice the pattern (2 min): what do Ngā Tamatoa, Te Reo Māori Society and Te Huinga Rangatahi have in common as organisations? What does that tell you about where this movement came from — and how does Lesson 2’s urbanisation table explain it?
- Read the quotation (3 min): Hana Te Hemara Jackson calls te reo “the substance of our Māori tanga” and “our link with our tīpuna”. She does not say te reo is useful, or beautiful. What is she claiming it is? Why does that framing make it a political claim rather than a preference?
Activity 2 · The Petition — 14 September 1972
⏱ 15 minWhat it is: the event itself, established precisely, then interrogated.
The verified record: on 14 September 1972 a petition was delivered to Parliament that, in NZHistory’s words, “challenged politicians to prioritise saving te reo Māori”. Archives New Zealand describes what it asked for: it “called for courses in Māori language and culture to be offered in all New Zealand schools”.
It carried over 30,000 signatures gathered from across Aotearoa, on around 1,500 sheets. It emerged out of the efforts of Ngā Tamatoa, the Te Reo Māori Society and Te Huinga Rangatahi (the New Zealand Māori Students’ Association). Hana Te Hemara Jackson of Ngā Tamatoa instigated it, was one of its organisers, and presented it. NZHistory names Te Ouenuku Rene (Ngāti Toa) as the kaumātua leading the group.
Archives New Zealand records one more thing: “Most of the people who signed the petition were not Māori.”
To mark the event, 14 September was declared Māori Language Day. Three years later this was expanded to Māori Language Week.
Run it
- Establish (4 min): students copy the five facts they will need in the final inquiry — the date, the number of signatures, the three organising groups, who instigated and presented it, and what it asked for. Exact, not approximate. Note the precision: courses in Māori language and culture in all New Zealand schools, not just “te reo in schools”.
- Most signatories were not Māori (5 min): this is a documented fact and it surprises people. What does it tell you about the campaign? Does it make the claim stronger, weaker, or different? Push past “it shows people cared” — think about who a petition is trying to persuade.
- Why schools? (6 min): the petition targeted the school system specifically. Why would a movement worried about a language go there? Connect back to Lesson 2 — what had schooling already done to te reo?
🪶 Cultural integrity: for many whānau the decline of te reo is not a topic — it is a family history, and sometimes a recent one. Some ākonga in the room are the first generation in their family to learn te reo, and some are not learning it. Neither is a story anyone owes the class. Do not ask students to disclose their own or their whānau's reo, and do not position a Māori student as the room's expert or example. Keep the analysis on the historical record and the strategy. Where kaiako Māori or whānau are willing to bring a local kōrero into this lesson, that is theirs to offer, not the teacher's to request.
Activity 3 · Same Goal, Three Kinds of Claim
⏱ 20 minWhat it is: the core analytical work of the lesson, and the reason Lesson 1 exists. Three moves, all aimed at the survival of te reo Māori. Students run the four questions on each.
Run it
- Four questions × three moves (10 min): in groups of three, take one move each, run all four questions on it, then teach your move to the other two. Every group ends with all three analysed.
Who has the right? · Who recognises it? · Who can deny it? · What gives that right authority? - Classify (5 min): using Part A of the spine sheet, name the kind of claim each move is making. Expect argument about Move 3 — that argument is the lesson.
- The comparison (5 min): which move produced a change in law? Which produced a change in what children could actually do on a Monday morning? Are they the same move? What does that tell you about how social change works?
The through-line to land, in their words: Move 1 asked the state for something. Move 2 told the state it had already promised something and had to keep the promise — a completely different argument, made on completely different authority. Move 3 did not ask. Students should be able to say which of these is closest to tino rangatiratanga in practice — and to say why that is a genuinely harder question than it looks, since kōhanga reo later sought and received state funding and recognition.
🪶 Handle with care: the question “is Move 3 an expression of tino rangatiratanga?” is a real and worthwhile question, and it is not for a non-Māori teacher to settle in front of the class. Put it up, let students argue it with evidence, and let it stay open. Do not summarise the discussion with a definition of tino rangatiratanga. This exchange is flagged for kaiako Māori review.
Activity 4 · The Chain: 1972 → 1982 → 1986 → 1987
⏱ 12 minWhat it is: students build the causal chain and then test whether it is really a chain.
| When | What happened | Who | What kind of change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Sept 1972 | Te reo Māori petition delivered to Parliament, 30,000+ signatures, asking for te reo in schools | Ngā Tamatoa · Te Reo Māori Society · Te Huinga Rangatahi · Hana Te Hemara | |
| 13 April 1982 | Pukeatua Kōhanga Reo, Wainuiomata, takes its first tamariki on Easter Tuesday. Four more open soon afterwards | Elders including Jean Puketapu and Iritana Tawhiwhirangi | |
| by 1985 | Within three years there are more than 300 kōhanga reo | Whānau | |
| 1985 | First kura kaupapa Māori — Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Hoani Waititi, West Auckland | ||
| 1985–86 | Wai 11 te reo claim lodged; the Tribunal’s 1986 report recommends Māori become an official language | Ngā Kaiwhakapūmau i te Reo | |
| 20 July 1987 | Māori Language Act 1987 declares te reo Māori an official language of New Zealand, confers a right to speak Māori in certain legal proceedings, and establishes Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori | Parliament | |
| 2016 | The 1987 Act is repealed and replaced by Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori 2016 / Māori Language Act 2016, which now carries official-language status | Parliament |
Run it
- Complete the last column (5 min): for each row, was this a change in law, a change in institutions, a change in public opinion, or a change in what people could actually do? More than one is allowed.
- Test the chain (4 min): fifteen years separate the 1972 petition from the 1987 Act. Does the top of this table cause the bottom of it? Find one link in the chain you could argue is not really a link.
- The last row (2 min): the 1987 Act was repealed in 2016 and replaced. Does that mean the 1987 Act failed? What else could a repeal-and-replace mean?
- Fill the matrix (3 min): complete the Lesson 3 row of your unit evidence matrix. Column 3 is the one to get right.
Exit · One Claim, One Limit
⏱ 6 min- Claim: one sentence about the 1972 petition that names at least two of the groups or people involved and states what was asked for.
- Kind: name which kind of claim the 1985 Tribunal case was making, and what gave it its authority.
- Limit: one thing today's evidence does not tell you — about what happened in schools after 1972, or about whether the language is safe now.
🎯 Curriculum Links | Te Hononga ki te Marautanga
Taught from the record: this lesson teaches the “Māori language revival” strand of the Phase 4 statement below through named actors and a documented chain of events, rather than as a general theme.
- Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 4 (Years 9–10) (Knowledge): “Māori language revival, land rights activism (e.g. Land March, Raglan Golf Course protests, and Bastion Point occupation). Urban protest movements (e.g. Ngā Tamatoa, Haka Party Incident, and Foreshore and Seabed Hikoi).”
- NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 5: “Understand how the ideas and actions of people in the past have had a significant impact on people’s lives.”
📦 Materials & Resources
- Language as Resistance Source Lab — one per ākonga.
- The Rights Frame & Evidence Matrix — students already have this from Lesson 1.
- Video anchor (reuse): NZ Activism unit · Lesson 6: Māori Renaissance and Language Revival — carries a Ngā Tamatoa documentary embed with pause points at 03:30 and 07:15. Preview it yourself before class; if you use it, run it between Activity 1 and Activity 2 and extend the lesson to 90 minutes.
- Companion handout (reuse): Māori Renaissance and Language Revival Companion.
- Teacher background: Archives New Zealand’s Māori Language Petition story, and NZ Parliament’s Te Petihana Reo Māori feature. Both hold images of the petition itself.
📊 Assessment Framework
Formative. This lesson supplies one of the strongest rows in the final inquiry.
- LI 1: Activity 1 step 2 and the exit slip both require named people and groups in place of “Māori activists”.
- LI 2: Activity 2 step 3 connects schooling to language loss — look for students linking the tactic to the cause.
- LI 3: Activity 3 classification, checked against Column 3 of the matrix row.
🚀 Differentiation & Extension
- Reading load: the six cards in Activity 1 are independent — assign two per pair, then jigsaw so every ākonga hears all six.
- Language support: pre-teach petition, taonga, guarantee, revitalisation. Give the Activity 3 groups the petition (Move 1) first — it is the most concrete.
- Support: for Activity 3, provide the four questions pre-printed with answer lines rather than as an open task.
- Extension: the Tribunal recommends; it does not order. The Crown could have ignored the 1986 finding. Write a paragraph arguing whether the 1987 Act shows the Tribunal worked, or shows that it only works when a government already wants to act. Use the dates.
- Further extension: find one Ngā Tamatoa campaign this lesson does not mention — they also worked on te Tiriti o Waitangi and on racism in New Zealand institutions. Cite where you found it, and say which kind of claim it was making.
- Further extension: most people who signed the 1972 petition were not Māori. Find out what a petition to Parliament actually obliges Parliament to do, and use that to explain why the number and breadth of signatures mattered.
- Cultural safety: see the flagged note in Activity 2. Do not ask ākonga to disclose their whānau’s relationship with te reo.
🔗 Unit Progression | Te Ara o Ngā Akoranga
Lesson 2 established what had been done to te reo and to Māori landholding. This lesson takes the language thread; Lessons 4 and 5 take the whenua thread. Lesson 7 returns to the Waitangi Tribunal introduced here and asks what an institution can and cannot carry — the 1985 Wai 11 claim in Activity 3 is the same Tribunal, and the same argument, as the Ōrākei claim in Lesson 5.
Three things a kaiako should know. (1) Source conflict on the organisers: NZHistory and Archives New Zealand name three groups; Te Ara names only two (Ngā Tamatoa and Te Reo Māori Society). This lesson uses three and says so. (2) A number not to confuse: Archives New Zealand also holds a submissions file with over 300,000 signatures. That is a different document from the petition’s 30,000+. Do not merge them. (3) Founding year: Te Ara gives Ngā Tamatoa’s founding as 1970 in one place and “the end of the 1960s” in another, so this lesson says “around 1970”.