Legal Maori Archive available
The first stage of the Legal Māori Project – the Legal Māori Archive – was launched on 8 June. This is the initial step towards producing New Zealand’s first Legal Māori Dictionary.
The first stage has involved collecting more than 14,000 pages of 19th century documents that illustrate the bilingual nature of New Zealand’s legal history. The archive has been created in partnership with Victoria University’s New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC), which has digitised the documents and made them available as fully searchable text.
“This is our first funded milestone,” project co-leader, Victoria University law lecturer, Mamari Stephens, says. “The point of digitising the documents is to make the texts electronically available so we can analyse the language and establish the Legal Māori corpus, which is our next milestone.”
It is the first time the documents have been brought together in one place and is the largest collection of single documents that the Electronic Text Centre has digitised.
The collection includes speeches of Māori MPs, Turton’s collection of land deeds, Māori language translations of acts of Parliament and parliamentary bills, as well as petitions from relevant Māori and Native Affairs select committee reports.
Funding from the Victoria University’s Library Contestable Fund and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology has assisted the project, which is informed by a reference group that includes prominent academics, experts in te reo Maori, linguists and judges.
Victoria’s law school dean, Professor Tony Smith, says: “This work is of importance to New Zealand, to Māori and the university. Its potential impact is great – it will, in short, allow a Māori voice in a legal context in a way never before possible.”
The Legal Māori Archive is freely available to the public and can be accessed via the NZETC website at www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-legalMaori.html
LawTalk 732, 29 June 2009