Using our words

It's been nearly a decade since the dedicated efforts of a few brave souls to normalise the inclusion of te reo Māori introductions in the media sparked a vitriolic backlash from a small but influential collective of mostly rich old white men and their pet think tank operatives.

Who can forget the formidable Kim Hill dismembering 'Doctor Brash' in 2017 as he spluttered his way through an interview bitterly complaining 'I can't understand anything any more', while she asks him to show her on the doll where kia ora hurt him.

Yes, the usual suspects lost their tiny minds and community te reo classes filled up as decent, ordinary people just said 'fuck you' and got on with trying to have a normal one.

It feels interesting celebrating Te Wiki o te Reo Māori this year while we have openly racist members of government still pandering to the most entitled, spiteful and petulant elements of our society. That frequent racist comments are mostly allowed to pass unchecked and unpunished in the house is an indictment on the poor quality and lack of moral clarity in the current leadership.

Recently language app Babbel selected Māori word kaitiakitanga as the most beautiful word in the world. Babbel said the word topped a list of 223 words from 75 languages.

Selected by a diverse panel the word stood out for its distinctive sound, layered meaning and cultural significance.

Kaitiakitanga means guardianship and protection,  a way of protecting and caring for the environment for present and future generations based on the Māori world view.

While it's a small thing getting an award for a word it seemed heartening that in these times of uncertainty that people are instinctively elevating the values and ideals we need to be nurturing together. That a Kupu (word) from a revived indigenous language, steeped in the celebration of interrelationship and life, should resonate so powerfully in these times.

I occasionally think about how former US presidential candidate Al Gore made the documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' 20 years ago now.

The movie was the first 'alarming' look at the science of how seasons and patterns were changing, what we now call climate change - the impacts on the biosphere of human industrial activity and associated waste products, and the need to regulate emissions, design for sustainability and start protecting our home planet. The movie gave us some science and shared language to make sense of the choices we had and the consequences of those choices.

Since then fossil fuel corporates, aligned military-industrial entities and tech investors set about establishing the infrastructure to conduct social surveillance, manipulate populaces and create a parallel economy they could control beyond any government scrutiny or enforcement to ensure business as usual prevailed.

Building largely on the tobacco industry disinformation blueprint, a huge global network of 'think tanks' and associated 'astroturfs' relentlessly pushed junk science to hijack and confuse the narrative, while undermining transparency, public interest research and reporting that exposed harm or tried to hold industries accountable.

The network was able to spread largely by stealth because it defied being identified by or linked to one name or brand. All the member branches have locally relevant names and branding that run both outward facing think tank activities and inner circle private events.

Meanwhile aligned wealthy interests continued to buy out media capturing or trashing communications and social media networks in an attempt to control the narrative and make it harder for people to elect governments that may regulate pollution, exploitation, corruption and human rights abuses.

They poured money into elections and backed politicians willing to dismantle internal infrastructure, undermine institutional integrity from within and reduce capacity to regulate, investigate or enforce measures to protect public interest.

Sex predator and dirty intelligence operative Jeffrey Epstein was at the centre of a extortion, drug and sex trafficking cartel that serviced and influenced powerful politicians and businesspeople.

Epstein's email account was exposed as part of a court ordered release of documents collected during FBI investigations into alleged sex offending.

One thing 'The Epstein Files' emails reveal is how he used large charitable academic donations and hosting exclusive functions as strategic pathways to identify useful targets and advance relationships for potential regulatory and political capture.

These connections allowed 'window dressing' to create an air of legitimacy for Epstein's 'financier' cover. It seems certain from information that has been released that he was connected to Russian and Israeli intelligence sources.

Despite overwhelming evidence of serious crimes most participants remain shielded from scrutiny, investigation or consequences by money, security networks, layers of staff and protections of various offices and statuses.

The more powerful or compromised the individual the more the network reinforces its grip and incentivises a cover up and the destruction of democratic institutions that may have the power to enforce accountability. It's no accident most of US President Trump's cabinet secretaries are also featured in the 'Epstein Files'.

Fake betting markets, crypto and unregulated AI - which has stolen everyone's intellectual property to sell back to them - need vast quantities of energy to operate, in many cases more than whole cities, and use water to cool them.

The data centres are frenetically pitched as 'growth' - but in reality seem mostly a market mechanism for gorging on subsidies to prop up obsolete technologies while loading communities with costs for associated noise, pollution and resource shortages.

The 'move fast and break things' crew- AI's own creators - are panicking that the lack of regulations around technology that is now being experimentally used to operate drones, robots - and reported 'autonomous kill chains' might be a problem,

Perhaps they are being too often identified as the biggest threat..?

In the past few days author and activist Naomi Wolf  published an article in the Guardian calling out the growing pools of unchecked power and willingness of the tech-space-energy-defence oligarchs to bypass any protections for human or planetary health, particularly as unregulated AI development accelerates, as a catastrophic threat.

Issuing a stark warning, Wolf calls the nihilistic architects of this new techno fascism, who seem to think everything living is expendable and everything existing is exploitable for new profit frontiers,  “traitors to creation”.

When I am not doomscrolling or ranting in blogs or feeling a bit overwhelmed by how cruel the world can be I ask myself - what can I do? What does it mean to be kaitiakitanga in these times, and how do we animate that thought; bring that future to life? 

Listening to the rain on the roof the other day I thought of another word: 

“Petrichor: a distinctive, earthy, usually pleasant odour that is associated with rainfall, especially when following a warm, dry period, and that arises from a combination of volatile plant oils and geosmin released from the soil into the air, and by ozone carried by downdrafts.

It's a word some scientists made up to describe a phenomenon that they wanted people to understand that didn't already have its own word.

I say petrichor out loud. I like the way it rolls off the tongue. It matters that we have a language for nature; for that moist earthy smell that fill your nostrils when you breathe in deeply after a rain shower.

It matters to name things and have a shared understanding.

And I take a deep breath.

Mauri ora