Kiribati Language Week: i-Kiribati fighting to protect their 'birthright'

Friday, 8 July 2022

Learn a few phrases in Kiribati from Auckland Museum Pacific advisor Charles Enoka.

One of New Zealand’s smallest communities is the centre of attention this week as Kiribati Language Week begins on Sunday.

According to the latest census results from 2018, there are 3,225 i-Kiribati (pronounced ee-kiri-bas) in New Zealand. Of those, nearly 44% live in Auckland.

The census shows about 43% of New Zealand i-Kiribati speak two languages – English and Kiribati – and most tend to be older.

Making sure the next generation of i-Kiribati learn and use their mother tongue is of top concern to community member Charles Enoka Kiata.

Charles Enoka Kiati is worried the younger i-Kiribati in New Zealand aren’t able to maintain their language easily.

* Teaching climate hope, not despair

* Travelling Kiwis urged to get boosted despite vaccination rise in the Pacific

Enoka is a member of the Pacific Leadership Forum and volunteers for the Pacific Media Network producing a weekly programme entirely in Kiribati. He is also on the Auckland Museum’s Pacific Advisory Board and is an interpreter and translator for the Ministry of Justice.

Enoka said while the earliest migrants to Aotearoa still held their language strongly, their younger descendants did not.

“Our language is our birthright and our identity,” he said.

He said i-Kiribati migrants were like any other – they brought their cultural values, identities and language to New Zealand and embedded themselves into society. But as they did, they embraced their new lives and let their mother tongue go.

“We lose our own cultural identity and especially our language.”

The language of Kiribati was imbued with local history and philosophy, especially about the environment that i-Kiribati depended on for their happiness and survival, he said.

The island’s origin story encapsulated that.

As Enoka retold it, the 33 islands of Kiribati, originally called Tungaru, were created by a god, Nareau. Nareau created the three spheres that i-Kiribati were obligated to protect: karawa, tarawa and marawa – the air, land and ocean. Tarawa is also the name of the country’s capital.

“Our people live with these three spheres so they respect the sky, the ocean and the land and everything that is within them. We have been living off those resources and enjoying plentiful rains falling, the plantations and the marine resources.

“But as the world evolves, the environment has been contaminated.”

Kiribati is a country of low-lying atolls and the impacts of climate change have been an everyday reality for locals for decades.

Enoka said relatives back home were watching their shorelines shrink and enduring a lack of clean freshwater in the face of the warming climate.

“Are we prepared for this global problem? In Kiribati, we are not,” he said.

“We are people of the land and ocean that live on this planet with a right to our sovereignty … but climate change is not our cause and it is not our creation.

“This is the ongoing cry of our sinking islands - we are calling for immediate help to save us from this thing.”

The museum will be illuminated in red, white and blue every evening from July 10-16 in honour of Kiribati Language Week.