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Behind the Work in association withThe Immortal Awards
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Pīkari M: An Artist’s Journey to Highlighting Indigenous News

10/05/2023
Advertising Agency
Auckland, New Zealand
73
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Sam Bailey, founder of Kōpū O Te Rangi & co-creator of Pīkari M, spoke to LBB’s Casey Martin about their royally important online tool, created in partnership with ColensoBBDO

Sam Bailey, [Ngāti Huarere, Ngāti Porou ki Harataunga], founder of Kōpū O Te Rangi & co-creator of Pīkari M is a Māori artist who has paved a path no one has taken before.

Upon joining the call with Sam, it became clear to me that I was in the presence of a generous spirit - a quality that is valued in the creative industry. The work that they have done has gone from encouraging the engagement of local New Zealand communities to being in demand globally within 48 hours of its release. 

A web browser extension that weeds out royal news and replaces it with news about and written by Indigenous journalists is something the world didn’t know it needed. Partnering with ColensoBBDO, Sam has created something that is uniting communities and allowing those who choose to be selective of the news they deem to be most important to them. 



LBB> What was the inspiration behind creating this online tool?

Sam> It's two-pronged. For the user. It was made because there's a general fatigue experienced by our whānau or our wider public here. And especially, for the Maori people, who are our First Nations folk. When the news coverage of the Queen's passing was so huge, there was a lot for Indigenous folk to have to rationalise and contextualise. And so I wanted to give our whānau a way to opt out of that. 

The second prong is that it was an acknowledgement of Indigenous journalists and people who are uplifting and supporting the voices of their own communities. Particularly through an environmental or sustainability lens. Indigenous people make up 10% of the world's population but care for 90% of the ecology, so this is also a way to kind of talk about climate justice, and issues close to our hearts, and about the people who are doing that and exploring that are indigenous journalists.

LBB> How do you go about choosing the indigenous news sources that are featured?

Sam> It's currently being redeveloped. We made the plugin within a week, and that was thanks to the work of ColensoBBDO and the support that we have here. Within that week, it's grown and we've been realising that the responsibility and role of curating is huge. So originally, they were all hand-picked current affairs by Indigenous writers and that lens for us was really important. But we're developing an external source, we just need to get it approved on the browser platforms that can do it. 

LBB> Developing this within a week and launching it must have been a feat. What were the challenges that arose, and how did you face them? 

Sam> I think when people hear we made it in a week, they think that means it must have been in a flurry. But actually, we were really lucky to have worked with a majority Indigenous team. If they weren't indigenous, then they were descendants of Gaelic and Celtic blood. So, methodologies that we arrived at around ideation and kind of the working behaviours within the project, were grounded in co-creation and a holistic framework of everybody having the right kind of platform to feed in. And I think that was really commendable. We all worked toward a shared goal. A hierarchy was never in the spaces that we were in, which meant that the whole way through every single day, we were always aligned, which was beautiful. 

The only barrier was Google and Apple's approval processes, waiting for three days for them to approve on the Google Chrome store. 

LBB> What has the feedback been like so far?

Sam> We, surprisingly, haven't had any challenging feedback so far. Or, if we have, it's definitely not coming to our channels. It's only been around for 48 hours, but you can believe it's been seen in 1200 cities in 75 countries. The first post on Instagram received 50,000 Organic views in 12 hours. No pushed media as that was something that we just couldn't afford. Yesterday, the agency stepped in and approved a budget to do it, and the support has just been amazing. The way that ColensoBBDO has stepped into what we call treaty partnership and honouring that relationship has been commendable. And, I think it kind of speaks to the sign of the times. The critical lens that people are applying to the way that we're living our lives at the moment, and the structures of power that are in play.

LBB> Finally, what do the global plans look like for Pīkari M?

Sam> We're currently developing Pīkari M.com. When we posted it through our channels, we had Indigenous Australians contact us about the possibility of implementing the plug-in to include their news. And I said yes if you'd be open to illustrating a Kaitiaki for us to welcome people into the space. For us as Maori, we're happy to gift it or we call it koha. We want to make sure that people who are using it see that we're not just talking about ourselves as Indigenous everywhere, but that it's a gift from Indigenous folk to Indigenous folk.

We had Pinoy from the Philippines reach out who went through the same process. We've had someone from Cook Island reach out and Hawaii. So that's what we've been doing. We've built the plugin to include global indigenous news. There are no articles for mature audiences, as part of regulations. We ensure that they're written by Indigenous news writers, we're only using Indigenous news platforms.



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