ABSTRACT

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to provide a sense of the broad landscape into which family language policy, and this edited collection, sits. In New Zealand, where this book had its genesis, we often use the word whakapapa when we talk of genealogy, of ancestry, of the family tree. We know who we are because we know where we come from. Thus, in a book dedicated to family language policy, it seems appropriate to begin by considering the whakapapa of this field of investigation.