'Canaries in the coal mine': the reframing of biculturalism and non-Maori participation in Maori language learning

Maori language education policy documents reflect an underlying ambivalence about the desired outcomes for non-Maori learners participating in 'as-a-subject' Maori language learning. The view of the Maori language as a national language may be in the process of being replaced by a view that identifies the language primarily as a cultural taonga (treasured possession) belonging to those of Maori ethnicity in the interests of an emergent elite. This is a process that characterises the 'reframing of biculturalism'. Language, as a communally shared good, serves an important boundary marking function and can be employed as a demarcating feature of identity. Viewed in this way, the Maori language contributes to strengthening a Maori ethnic identity, which in turn secures access to group rights. These group rights were established when Maori tribes were reconstituted as economic corporations or neotribes in political partnership with the government in the 1980s. The increasing exclusion of non-Maori from the Maori language may result in their rejection of biculturalism.