Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori at Christichurch City Libraries

30 July 2010

Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori 

Mon 26 July – Sunday 1 August 2010

Celebrating Te Wiki o te reo Māori at the Library  is always an exciting time with lots of activities and performances to tempt everyone.

We designed our posters to  acknowledged the National theme for the week ‘Te Mahi Kai – the language of food’ and we used the image of one of the waikawa or baskets which were made during our Matariki weaving workshops  in June, weaving together  the concepts of  Listening, Learning, Enjoying & Speaking Te Reo Māori.

The main  focus  is always on trying to raise the confidence levels of our colleagues  across the Library network so  there were lots of basic  reo language workshops on offer as well as opportunities for individual teams to learn a waiata.

Online quiz’s were created  with lots of chocolate fish on offer as incentives eg:

  1. Name 5 native birds (hint; use the Māori name…)
  2. What does the phrase “Kei te pēhea koe” mean?
  3. How do you say “thank you” in Te Reo Māori?
  4. Name one publication/resource held by CCL that is written in Te Reo Māori
  5. Write in Te Reo Māori, words for the numbers 1, 3, 25, 16
  6. Name 3 mountains (hint; use the Māori name…)

Pre  school bilingual story times to children all around our network was  appreciated by both the children and the  parents  with lots of enthusiastic singing and dancing taking place

School kapahaka performances are always  a very popular event with  primary schools taking advantage of the chance to give their groups some public exposure prior to the School Cultural Festival in August.

Ngā Manu Tioriori, the Libraries waiata group, also provided public entertainment visiting  our libraries in the South to wow  the customers and staff  with the sweet sounds of  Purea nei amongst other popular waiata. One Māori customer  who had just arrived from Gisborne  was blown away by  the group, he said “the last thing he expected to hear when he visited one of our libraries here in Christchurch was Library staff singing waiata with such confidence and sweet sounds” we couldn’t have asked for  better feedback than this.

So  next time you are in Christchurch  pop in to one of our libraries  where you will see and feel how  well we support the official  language of Aotearoa or visit our website at http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/

Haneta Pierce

Māori Services Coordinator

Programmes Events & Learning