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The Māori Legal Project,
The first stage of The Māori Legal Project is to be launched today - the Legal Māori Archive - and will be the initial step towards producing New Zealand's first Legal Māori Dictionary.
The first stage has involved the collection of more than 14,000 pages of 19th century documents that illustrate the bi-lingual nature of New Zealand's legal history.
The Archive has been created in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington's New Zealand Electronic Text Centre (NZETC) which has digitised the documents and made them available as fully searchable text.
The Legal Māori Archive is freely available to the public and can be accessed via the NZETC website at: http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-corpus-legalMaori.htm
"This is our first funded milestone," says project co-leader, Victoria University law lecturer, Māmari Stephens.
"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, M?ori language translations of Acts of Parliament, Parliamentary Bills, as well as petitions from concerned M?ori and Native Affairs Select Committee reports.
Last year The Legal Māori Archive has been made possible by funding from the Victoria University of Wellington Library Contestable Fund and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.
The project is informed by a Reference Group which includes prominent academics, experts in te reo Māori, linguists and judges.
The Dean of Victoria's Law School, Professor Tony Smith, says of the project: "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."
"This first milestone along the way is something to celebrate."