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From https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/world/asia/new-zealand-maori-language.html

Maori Language, Once Shunned, Is Having a Renaissance in New Zealand
By Charlotte Graham-McLay
September 16, 2018

Maori is having a revival across New Zealand. Indigenous people are increasingly embracing their language, rejecting generations of stigma and shame associated with its use. And white New Zealanders are looking to Maori language and culture to help them make sense of their own cultural identity.

“This is the new New Zealand,” said Ella Henry, a Maori studies lecturer at Auckland University of Technology. “It’s not a blip in the cultural landscape. This is what New Zealand is becoming: a truly integrated place.”

As of 2013, just 3.7 percent of New Zealanders spoke the language fluently, and many predicted that it would soon die out. But analysts say Maori’s status is shifting, and a basic knowledge of the language has come to signify cultural cool in a country that continues to wrestle with its colonial and indigenous roots.

Read the full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/world/asia/new-zealand-maori-language.html