New Zealand Summit 2019
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Language is central to identity for indigenous peoples. It is an important contributor to indigenous development and governance, and it allows indigenous peoples to contribute towards wider social, economic, political development, and peaceful coexistence and reconciliation within our societies.
Many of the world's indigenous languages are in danger of disappearing, which is why the United Nations declared 2019 the Year of Indigenous languages to encourage urgent action to preserve, revitalise and promote them.
To celebrate UNESCO’s International Year of Indigenous Languages, New Zealand partnered with the Second International Conference on the Revitalization of Indigenous and Minoritized Languages to deliver a one-day summit during the wider conference on the 1 - 4 October 2019 in Brasilia at the University of Brasilia.
The New Zealand Summit was a place to share indigenous knowledge, ideas and experiences. It highlighted the importance of the role of the community and how collaboration between universities, the community and government can lead to successful models of engagement and implementation of initiatives across the system.
Using a co-creation model, Māori and indigenous communities in Latin America developed sessions focused on priority areas across indigenous language revitalisation, development and educational success streams. This enabled indigenous communities to learn directly from each other’s successes and failures.
Māori university leaders and other indigenous leaders shared their governance experiences to give an insight into the role universities can play in indigenous communities as a way to contribute to indigenous language revitalisation, development and educational success.
This event was supported by the Latin America Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence.
co-designing & co-creating the summit agenda
In July 2019, a Te Kāhui Amokura delegation went to South America to speak with indigenous groups, government agencies and universities to seek advice as to the key areas of importance for them in language revitalisation.
Four key themes were identified and our New Zealand Summit programme was structured around these themes.