Māori wellbeing has declined in the last three years - but the rise in te reo Māori could be key to helping improve it.
Younger generations are leading the way in speaking more te reo Māori. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
The latest Stats NZ Wellbeing Statistics survey showed Māori were sitting at 31 percent for poor mental wellbeing in 2021, an increase of 5 percentage points in the last three years.
Māori are currently sitting at 13 percent to more likely to have good outcomes in all areas of wellbeing compared to Pākehā at 24.4 percent.
But people being able to speak more than a few words or phrases of te reo Māori has gone from 24 percent in 2018 to now sitting at 30 percent in only three years.
Wellbeing principal analyst Dr Claire Bretherton said preserving te reo Māori had many aspects that helped improve Māori wellbeing.
"Particularly people passing on the language to their families, their whānau is really important and really closely linked with wellbeing. We see a really close correlation between those things and also to do with linkage with ancestral marae and other things.
"So we know that the use of language and maintaining culture is really important to wellbeing for many Māori."
Te Taura Whiri i te reo Māori chief executive Ngahiwi Apanui said learning te reo Māori could also help give Māori a sense of belonging.
Ngahiwi Apanui Photo: RNZ/Justine Murray
"We kind of look at who we are as New Zealanders and as generations go through the way that we view ourselves and see ourselves changes as well. And so I think, te reo Māori, for a lot of people, brings us closer to our land and associates us very, very closely, not just physically, but also spiritually with the place that we live," Apanui said.
The results showed the younger generations leading the way in speaking more te reo Māori but numbers for speaking more than a few words or phrases fell for those in the 75+ age group.
Dr Bretherton said the increase in ability to speak at least a little bit of te reo Māori was "really in those younger age groups or in your sort of up from 15 up to around 44 age groups.
"So that's where we're seeing that proficiency. Perhaps people are learning at work, picking up through their jobs."
The 75+ category was the only section that saw a decline in the ability to speak the language.
Almost a quarter (23 percent) of Māori now speak te reo Māori as one of their first languages, up from 17 percent in 2018.
Apanui said the numbers showed the country was well on the way to reaching Te Taura Whiri i te reo Māori's goal of 1 million speakers by 2040.
"So looking forward to achieving a goal of a million speakers of federal Māori by 2040 isn't something that we're going to do tomorrow. But we know that if we keep chipping away, working away doing what we do, then by 2040, there's a good chance that we'll get there.
"It's not going to be the leaders of today that will speak Māori in Parliament, or they will speak Māori and do interviews on TV in te reo Māori. It'll be the leaders of 20 or 30 years time," Apanui said.
That caused a drop in the number of Māori who said they could not speak the language, falling from 36 percent in 2016 to 29 percent in 2021.
Support for the language was high amongst Māori, too, with about 80 percent agreeing the government should encourage and support the use of te reo Māori in everyday situations.
The results showed three in five New Zealanders (62 percent) thought te reo Māori should be a core subject in primary schools, another five percentage point increase.
Apanui thought the 5 percent jump in numbers was an encouraging sign.
"I think a lot of that support will result in more and more people learning te reo Māori, and I can see within the next one to two generations we will have te reo Māori as a core subject in our all our primary schools for instance," Apanui said.
Out of the 3500 surveyed, only 476 were Māori - a huge drop compared to the 2018 survey where out of the 8500 participants, 1184 were Māori.
The reduced sample size was due to the Delta outbreak in August last year, meaning Stats NZ could not conduct in-person interviews.
Less than 500 were Māori compared to almost 1200 that took part in 2018 because of the Delta outbreak.
But Stats NZ was confident the latest wellbeing survey was an accurate reflection of Aotearoa since it thoroughly examined the samples.
"The way our surveys work is that the sample is selected across the country with different demographic groups and then we apply weighting," Dr Bretherton said.
"So what we do is we then match that against them, the population, what we know of the population in the country and from that we're able to turn the responses we get into data that can tell us a story about New Zealand."