Māori linguist Vincent Olsen-Reeder has had enough of social media outrage masquerading as reo Māori discourse – and of the media that keeps feeding it.
Are you really Māori if you speak Māori? Should wāhine speak Māori before getting moko kauae? Should wāhine be allowed to speak on the marae?
These are the questions many Māori are often asked for their opinions on. In a clip from an interview that is doing the rounds on social media, a group of reo Māori speakers is asked whether they think being able to speak Māori “makes you more Māori”. While most say whakapapa is enough, one respondent says he believes having the ability to speak te reo does make you more Māori. The question and that particular response has drawn the ire of many, provoking what seems to be an age old debate around what defines a “Māori”?
I’ve been in the Māori language world since 2008. Over time, social media has become the main way people with an interest in te reo Māori stay up to date on the latest happenings in the language world. We’re so spread out and it’s nice for those interested to come together in some way. I used to have to wait for Māori news shows Te Kāea and Te Karere to air – and hope I was free to watch them.
Despite everyone saying “he taonga te reo” all the time, it’s pretty hard to get people to do something that really enacts that statement. It takes many hours for language people like me to motivate someone, and it’s really easy to shut that motivation down to a point they will opt to spend their time doomscrolling, instead of learning a language.
In Minority Rules, author Ash Sarkar teaches us the algorithms of social media platforms are driven only by rage. Not what’s cool, not what people are buying, not advertising, not a “#FYP”. Pure human rage.
It’s not surprising then, that any kaipāpāho would spend much of their time rage-baiting. It’s easy – the algorithm does their job for them. So many have spent far too long chasing Māori angst over the same three things: the fake Māoriness quantum, prerequisites for tā moko, and the linguistic role women play in our society.
Since at least 2008, those same stories have popped up every few months or so. In that time too, nothing about the dialogue has changed. There are no new additions to the conversation. There is no change in the spirit of the dialogue. Sometimes, the people interviewed don’t even change. It’s always the same story as the last one. If the rage-temptation is resisted and we look for substance, it’s actually pretty boring.
There are very real issues pertaining to te reo Māori that merit rage. The State of Te Reo Māori Report was released last month and no media platforms extensively covered it, unlike the Oranga Tamariki report released in June.
Since 2014, the government has known it doesn’t collect data about te reo Māori well – it’s written data guides about it. On the outside, we’ve worked hard to get that corrected and it would be very easy to do so. The data about the Māori language could be excellent, but at the moment our ability to truly understand the health of te reo Māori is being unnecessarily impeded.
Do people know what’s going on with our Māori-speaking men? Because there are barely any left and they feel more negative about te reo Māori than women.
On the flip-side, do people know just how much our wāhine contribute to the survival of te reo Māori? That in itself is worthy of recognition. We should have several more Dames than we currently do. Who’s raising their profile?
Some stative verbs, like mārama, mau and wareware were changing verb class before the arrival of English. As a linguist, I’m not so worried about those, so long as the sentence aligns grammatically. But there are other words, such as mutu and oti, that are also changing class now. That certainly looks to be an English influence, and that influence should be cause for concern. People like me are trying to monitor that, but there’s only so much we can write, publish, kauhau and put on social media. At some point, shouldn’t our media outlets be doing their bit too?
Surely, a media platform that truly believes te reo Māori is a taonga will look beyond its rage metrics because I, as a consumer of their stories who also believes te reo is a taonga, do not care about that. Rage topics are not new, they’re not relevant, they’re not necessary and they’re certainly not a good use of the intelligent minds Māori media calls on. We are smart, analytical people. Who cares about a fabricated language-blood quantum?
In watching this kind of thing play out again, I observed how some social media accounts – accounts I mostly agree with – also use that rage bait for what looks to be personal gain. By providing a swift amount of rage response, I think I can see how they capitalise on that anger to ride the algorithm wave towards their own follower count. That keeps the siloed discussion going longer and legitimises to media outfits that this is what we are interested in as a people.
Seeing this has made me post my own opinions on social media in ways they likely won’t be seen or picked up by as many people. I use my limited knowledge of what social media demands and do the opposite: Boring, long text on an Instagram story. I do that because I want a counter-opinion sitting somewhere, but I am also trying not to align too heavily with the algorithm of rage.
Māori mā – you are not a consumer of social media. You are the product and the service. That is also wisdom I take from Ash Sakar, and she’s absolutely correct. He taonga te riri. You are selling your rage and heightened blood pressure for nothing.
The rage of racism already forces Māori language content into that angry sphere. Can’t we do something else?