Twenty years ago today, or to be more culturally appropriate to this story, rua tekau years ago today, Whakaata Māori began broadcasting in Aotearoa.
It had been a decade-long battle to get the station off the ground and on the air, decades-long if you trace the roots of the fight to get te reo officially recognised in New Zealand. In 1986, the Waitangi Tribunal ruled that yes, te reo Māori was a taonga (treasure) and five years later, in 1991, the Crown accepted its contractual obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi to preserve te reo.
Read on @ The Herald (paywalled)
