Celebrate International Mother Language Day – Friday 21st February

This Friday Library is International Mother Language Day and the Library would like to invite you to take part in our celebration of this important day. International Mother Language Day is a day that is intended to celebrate and protect all the languages of the world. There are approximately 6000 languages on this planet, of which 43% are endangered.

We wish to celebrate the diversity of culture we have here at Ara and we thought we could do this in a few ways. Please join us in the Library to stick a pin in our world map to share with others where you are from. There will also be board with a bunch of Post-Its where you can write and write a greeting or proverb in your mother language.

Or you could share an example on our Library Facebook Page, an image or short video of your written or spoken Mother Language

Contributions from students from previous years

Hope to see you in the Library tom

Waitangi Day 2020…

Thursday February 6th 2020 is a public holiday in New Zealand…it is the day we celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The meeting house at Waitangi

The Treaty was signed in 1840 by representatives of the Crown and 45 Maori chiefs at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. Copies of the Treaty were then taken around the country and signed by various chiefs and sub chiefs.

The actual Treaty of Waitangi

Waitangi Day was officially commemorated for the first time in 1934, and became a public holiday in 1974

If you would like to know more about the history of the Treaty, and the social, legal, and political impact the Treaty has had on life in Aotearoa, there many resources available in the library & online. Here are a few examples:

Wishart, Ian. (2012) The Great divide: the story of New Zealand & its treaty

    Orange, C. (1989). The story of a Treaty

   O’Malley, V. (2010). The Treaty of Waitangi companion

The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti O Waitangi, from the Waitangi Tribunal website

If you are planning on staying home on Thursday then tune into Maori TV . There will be extensive coverage of Waitangi Day celebrations from around the country.

Whatever you do on February the 6th, enjoy the day, and celebrate the uniqueness that is Aotearoa New Zealand.