Oceania – 3

With the expansion of the Tokelau Public Service establishment in Apia in 1976, a number of substantial official documents appeared in both English and Tokelau versions for distribution both in the atolls and among migrant Tokelauans in New Zealand, e.g., Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission (Simona 1976). The most important and widely circulated publication was undoubtedly Te Vakai, a newsletter produced by the Office of Tokelau Affairs, the first issue published in August 1976. In spite of the pressures from Samoan and the uninformed attitudes of some administrations over the past 120 years, it had maintained an unbroken tradition as the language of everyday use in the atoll communities.

The Tokelau Dictionary of over 550 pages was published in 1986, the result of 10 years’ work by the Tokelau lexicographer, with advice and assistance from many others.

A slimmer publication with a semi bilingual format produced by a team consisting of an ethnomusicologist, a Tokelau performer and an anthropologist is Songs and Stories: an Introduction to the Cultural Heritage (Thomas et al. 1990). The book was written essentially for an English-speaking readership, though with Tokelau song and story texts and English translations.

A rather different dual language strategy was used for Matagi Tokelau, published in 1990. The Tokelau texts for the book were the product of 10 years of meetings, writing and consultations by a committee made up of representatives from the three atoll communities. These Tokelau texts were edited, arranged into sections and chapters, and published in a Tokelau language edition. The English language translation (Matagi Tokelau: History and Traditions of Tokelau) was published as a separate volume in 1991.

The first-generation Tokelau migrants — those who were born in the atolls and who came to New Zealand as adults — thus have ample scope to maintain fluency in their language. Indeed, many adults live, work, worship and spend all their leisure time in contexts where Tokelauan is used almost exclusively. The situation is somewhat more complex, however, among the children and young adults who have had either all or most of their schooling in New Zealand. Their English fluency is naturally much greater than that of most of their elders, but their Tokelauan less, parents now worry that they will forget Tokelauan.

Older generations of people living in Tokelau speak both Tokelauan and Samoan(Swains Island). With less than 5000 speakers, the Tokelauan language is endangered. There is a struggle to teach a language that is spoken by only handful of people, when learning a widely known language such as English has a much greater benefit in their society.