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Call For Rotuman People To Speak Language Or It Could Be 'Lost Forever'
Luka Forman, Journalist
A community leader from a tiny island nation says preserving her native tongue is more important than ever, as schools on the island itself have stopped teaching it.
Rotuma is an island about 650km north of Fiji and is a dependency of Fiji.
Rotuman Community Centre chair Rachel Mario said the Fijian government had replaced Rotuman language lessons in schools on the island with Fijian.
That made it even more important for the community here in New Zealand to keep learning and speaking it, she said.
"If we don't revive the language or don't do enough about it, we'll lose it forever, so it's quite important that anyone with Rotuman blood out there adhere to that.
"If you don't teach your kids and you don't learn it, or you don't speak it at home, it's going to be lost forever."
About 8000 Rotumans live in New Zealand, she said.
"It's their identity, it's their culture. It'll also empower them once they know who they are."
Rotuman language week started Saturday, something Mario fought for two years to have recognised.
"They kept saying no, because they think we're Fijian and our culture is totally different. We speak different languages, we're totally different from the Fijians."
The Rotuman community centre would run activities throughout the week, including a church service, a decolonisation symposium and a seniors day.
The Rotuman people are a distinct ethnic group, with their own Polynesian language culture and identity.
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