The Māori are the members of an ethnical group in New Zealand. They are united by sharing the same culture, even though not all of them can speak their language due to the massive suppression. Key cultural traits of modern Māori consist of recognizing the ancestors and celebrating their origins in diverse ways. Specifically, there is a concept of being recognized as “people of the land” in the places where their ancestors used to live. Some of the distinctive traditions that are kept among Māori people nowadays are performing action songs, greeting each other by touching noses, and cooking food in specific types of ovens. However, the culture of Māori is put under threat by massive ethnic discrimination.
The most common ethnic discrimination among the Māori is racial discrimination. However, Māori people are exposed to multiple forms of discrimination that include discrimination based on their gender, age, and income. Moreover, discrimination is present in various areas of their lives, which majorly affects their sense of cultural identity and self-evaluation. Constant exposure to the discrimination of their origins puts a threat to the proper preservation of the authentic culture of the Māori due to the unwillingness of other people to understand, accept, and celebrate the differences. Thus, the process of suppressing the Māori can have terrible consequences of losing the authenticity of the culture and having less cultural awareness even among the native Māori people in the future.
Due to the constant suppression, Māori people have started to significantly lose the knowledge of their language. The major factor behind it was the massive restriction to speak the Māori language in schools to encourage people to integrate into the wider community. However, the prohibition to speaking one’s language challenges the cultural heritage of people and discriminates against their ethnical origins. Now, because the vast majority of people speak English, the Māori language is endangered. Hence, to preserve it from gradually disappearing, social groups have to encourage speaking the language instead of suppressing it, so the Māori could continue to massively pass it down to new generations.