Word by word: Reclaiming te reo Māori through Huia Publishers’ translingual children’s picturebooks

Abstract

Te reo Māori, Aotearoa’s Indigenous language, is spoken by a growing number of people (Lane 2024), with more than 30% of the total population reporting being able to speak more than a few words or phrases of the language and nearly a quarter of Māori being first language speakers (StatsNZ 2022). The resurgence of the language is taking place in a context of intensive language revitalisation which gained momentum in the 1980s (King 2018). For people who identify as Māori, but who have been denied access to their heritage language, the reclamation of te reo Māori can be traumatic (Hamley 2023). Children’s picturebooks created by Māori content creators offer a way to access Māori language (Daly 2025), supporting the reclamation of te reo Māori and and growing understandings of te ao Māori.

HUIA Publishers (n.d.), established in 1991, is a leading Indigenous publisher in Aotearoa. HUIA’s English language picturebooks, produced for a non-Māori speaking audience, are commonly translingual, interweaving Māori words and phrases. In this paper, we examine kupu Māori in HUIA’s picturebooks. Accessing their catalogue of trade publications from a period of more than 30 years, we extracted kupu Māori and undertook a semantic domain analysis to understand the types of kupu Māori that are included. We identify semantic domains that are variously enduring, transient, and newly emerging, and we explore the types of vocabulary that populate each semantic domain.

Our research departs from the established literature concerning New Zealand English by positioning kupu Māori in translingual picturebooks as tokens of Māori language, not English, reflecting the languages (and cultures) of HUIA’s content creators. Further, to analyse Semantic Domains, we step away from English categories and instead draw on cultural categories from te ao Māori to classify kupu. Our research demonstrates the wealth of Māori language that is shared through HUIA Publisher’s trade picturebooks. These picturebooks afford opportunities to a Māori audience to begin the process of reclaiming their heritage language. At the same time, they provide opportunities for Pākehā to engage with te reo Māori and te ao Māori.