Māori ways of speaking: Code-switching in parliamentary discourse, Māori and river identity, and the power of Kaitiakitanga for conservation

Abstract

ABSTRACT While colonial worldviews and practices continue to cast a long shadow, indigenous efforts to reflect and protect their humanature relationships mark a striking form of political resistance within modern legal contexts. One particularly revealing case is that of Aotearoa New Zealand during the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River) Settlement Bill in 2017, where Māori parliamentarians successfully advocated—after decades of struggle—for the granting of rights to a natural entity through nuanced code switching strategies between English and Te Reo Māori (the Māori language). Drawing on cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), we showcase how their code-switching practices highlighted cultural differences, built identities, and advocated for kaitiakitanga (the Māori worldview of guardianship). By looking at code-switching through CuDA's discursive hubs, we found that speakers relayed complex humanature worldviews and navigated the linguistic, colonial, political, and environmental struggles experienced within them. Speakers performed culturally distinct practices counter to Western derived hegemony, with regard not only to its depictions of the environment, but across its designations of what a culture should encompass regarding humanature relations within an intercultural setting such as Parliament.