19th-Century letters to the editor reveal Māori as 'OG social media influencers'

In the 1800s, members of the South Island iwi Ngāi Tahu wrote many eloquent letters to local newspapers about the challenges and promises of bicultural life.

Christchurch academic Dr Emma Maurice, a Māori woman adopted into a Pākehā world, has found strength in researching those letters.

We often hear about the negative impacts of colonisation but Māori pulled off something remarkable under that foreign influence - rapidly transforming their oral culture to a bilingual and bicultural one, says Maurice (Ngāti Kahungungu ki Heretaunga).

The letters written to local newspapers by members of Ngāi Tahu in this period demonstrate a high degree of "bicultural fluency" as well as agency and innovation, she tells Mihingarangi Forbes.

"Māori were able to uplift a second language and culture and have fluency within 50 years. From 1850 to 2024, has there been the same level of uptake by non-Māori in cultural fluency and language? There's the answer in there, but it's not for me to say what that is."

In 1850, Aotearoa was home to more literate Māori than literate Pākehā, Maurice says.

In newspapers - aka "the social media of their time" - Ngāi Tahu publicly shared their opinions on the country's evolution via 'letters to the editor'.

Using this platform, tangata whenua could communicate directly with the South Island's rural settler communities and advocate for bicultural partnership, she says.

"[Ngāi Tahu] are encouraging the sharing of resources. They're encouraging the leasing of land. They're encouraging trade."

While there were no letters to the editor from Māori women to the papers - and little mention of any women before the 1890s - words from the "formidable wahine" Hira Moroiti Pōhio Traill began to appear in the 1930s.

Traill used her letters to write against the forced conscription of young men, Maurice says, and also to have direct korero with Canterbury MPs about substandard infrastructure.

"I've got about 38 letters of an exchange between her and local MPs talking about everything from potholes in the road to wastewater pipes not being installed."

Maurice says she was"gifted" the research topic of Ngāi Tahu letters to the editor by Māori language advocate and academic Hana O'Regan.

The letters, published between between 1850 and 1950, became the subject of Maurice's PhD thesis Voices Across a Century .

For nine years, she immersed herself in these via the National Library's Past Papers archive.

As a Māori woman raised in a Pākehā world after a closed adoption, she says their powerful voices strengthened her own.

Although Maurice's "beautiful" adoptive parents knew how important it was for her to connect with her heritage, she was also surrounded by "stereotypical negative narratives" and as a young person did not identify as Māori.

"The majority of my friends had straight blonde hair and blue eyes and in the 80s the bob cut was a really big haircut. I have very frizzy Polynesian hair and when I got the bob haircut, the fringe was like two little ringlets that kind of bounced above my eyebrows… From that moment, I thought, okay, there's something different about me."

Entering puberty, Maurice felt an "incredible rage" burning inside as she struggled to find her own sense of identity and belonging.

Although she had a good experience of closed adoption, she says many other Māori children are not so lucky.

"As a little human, you need to be able to look around and see humans that reflect you. When you don't see that there is a level of trauma that you will then need to go through as an adult in order to get to that space."

"That's an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We need to build the fence at the top to prevent our tamariki from being placed in places where they are potentially unsafe."

Even after seeing 'ethnicity Māori' on her birth certificate in her late 20s, Maurice felt a "big disconnect" from the culture.

"I didn't see myself reflected anywhere. There was a decade or more period of my life where I wrangled with these questions of identity."

Maurice says she was only able to commit to her academic path after forging her own personal connection with te ao Māori in her 30s.

While Maurice feels "very at home" in Christchurch, connecting with her tupuna in Hawke's Bay was an essential part of this.

While living in the district for a time, she enrolling to study at EIT (The Eastern Institute of Technology) and was overcome by receiving there a kananga (ceremonial welcome).

"The tears just started streaming down my face. I thought 'For the first time I'm on my whenua. This is where my people have been for hundreds, if not thousands of years.' It was a sense of 'I've come home' and I could feel that they were like 'Welcome home, girl', spiritually."

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