Hello from my final stop of this wonderful summer – Auckland, New Zealand! Although it’s summer from the perspective of Chicago – my start and endpoint – it’s a wet winter here in New Zealand. I haven’t just been circling the globe neatly eastward; I’ve been zigzagging up and down! From sunny Wales to rainy South Africa, to stiflingly hot Singapore and the Philippines, and now to cold, damp New Zealand, I’ve hopped back and forth across the equator plenty of times over the last two months. Considering I packed for three different climates, I think I did pretty well fitting everything into one bag.
I’ve been in Auckland for two full days now. After sleeping for almost a full 12 hours post-arrival Thursday night, I woke up on Friday ready to explore. I took advantage of the sunny day and walked through downtown to the Viaduct Harbour, a lively waterfront area, and found the New Zealand Maritime Museum – a beautiful space overlooking the water with replicas and artifacts spanning the region’s maritime history, from early Polynesian navigation to European arrival. From there, I wandered past the fish market and looped back through the Central Business District. Today, I started my day off with a grocery run, after which I joined some new hostel friends to go watch a rugby match! The match was held at Eden Park, New Zealand’s national stadium, and although we (obviously!) decided to root for Auckland, they were crushed by Taranaki in a staggering 50-8 loss. It was cold and rainy, but meat pies from the stadium concession stands kept us (somewhat) warm.
Walking around, English dominates the cityscape, as expected. But given New Zealand’s reputation for institutionally supporting te reo Māori – the Māori language – I’ve been surprised at how little Māori signage I’ve actually encountered.
Te reo Māori only became an official language in 1987, which is astonishing when you consider how central it is to this place. Long before European ships appeared on these shores, Polynesian voyagers navigated here using the stars, ocean currents, and bird patterns – skills so precise that they could intentionally sail thousands of kilometers across the Pacific. These early navigators reached Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand) around the 13th century, making it the last major landmass on earth to be settled by humans. The people who became known as Māori built communities here, adapted to the colder climate compared to other Polynesian islands, and developed their own rich cultural, social, and political structures. Their relationship with the land and sea shaped everything from food systems to spirituality, and their oral traditions carried genealogies, histories, and knowledge across generations.
The language itself lived for centuries in voice alone, passed down through stories, songs, and prayer. It wasn’t written until English missionaries arrived in the 1800s, and the act of writing it down was already a step toward reshaping how it would exist in the world. The pivotal moment, though, came in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Māori had initially welcomed the visits of Europeans as it was beneficial trade for them, but as settler numbers grew, so did land disputes and lawlessness. The Treaty of Waitangi was presented as a safeguard: Britain sought to establish legal authority over settlers while assuring Māori that their lands and rights would be protected.
The treaty, as it happened, had two versions. The British Crown and Māori chiefs each signed a document, one in English and one in te reo Māori, but the two documents were not the same. The English version stated that Māori ceded all rights and the power of sovereignty to the Crown. The Māori version used the word kāwanatanga, which can be translated closer to “governance.” One treaty, two interpretations…and the consequences of that linguistic rift were devastating. What was sold as protection to many chiefs soon became a source of dispossession and conflict.
Depiction of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
As I read about this, it struck me how eerily it anticipates the questions at the heart of my project: translation is never neutral, and when power is involved, the meaning of a single word can alter the future of an entire people. By the end of the 19th century, the Māori population had been halved. European settlers, meanwhile, numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The imbalance was not just demographic, but linguistic, cultural, and political. The weight of it was visible everywhere I turned in the Maritime Museum, in the labels that struggled to hold two stories at once: the story of the colonizers, and the story of those whose land this was.
Yet, the story doesn’t end there. Inspired in part by global civil rights movements (like the one in the US), Māori protests in the 20th century forced the government to reckon, at least partially, with its broken promises. The Waitangi Tribunal was established, a body whose purpose is to investigate claims of treaty breaches. Queen Elizabeth II even admitted publicly that the treaty (and therefore the protection of Māori rights) had been ignored. In 1987, te reo Māori was finally recognized as an official language. Progress, though fragile, felt possible…which is why what’s happening right now feels so alarming.
New Zealand’s current government – one of the most right-leaning in decades – has dismantled the Māori Health Authority, scaled back the use of te reo in official communication, and, just this week, removed Māori words from children’s reading books. A hostel staff member mentioned the debate to me in passing, and then the headlines confirmed it: the Ministry of Education pulled At the Marae, a book for 5-year-olds, from its early reading series because it contained “too many” Māori words. Internal documents revealed the decision is part of a broader policy to exclude Māori vocabulary from any future books in the series altogether, on the grounds that it might “confuse” children.
The debate has multiple sides, but in my opinion, there are issues here. Not only is New Zealand English already full of Māori loanwords, but te reo Māori was deliberately transcribed into a phonetic orthography designed by English missionaries. In other words, the spelling matches the sound – exactly the kind of straightforward system you’d want children to practice with when learning to connect written words to spoken ones. Around one in five people in Aotearoa identify as Māori. For them, seeing te reo in books, signs, and public life isn’t just decorative, but rather a recognition of their existence. My Maritime Museum guide greeted us in te reo Māori, and it set the tone for everything that followed. To strip those words from children’s books is to say, in effect, that the language does not belong in the mouths of the next generation.
So, as I walk through Auckland – between English billboards, glimpses of Māori words, and chants like the haka, performed on rugby fields and political stages alike – I keep coming back to the idea that languages are not just tools of communication, but ways of being in the world.
I will, as always, have more to say the more days I spend here. Stay tuned!