In the study of psychology, Māori men are often only seen as the perpetrators of
the problems. There is very little focus on finding solutions for Māori men, with
Māori men. In the top eight causes of death for Māori males aged 15 to 24 are car
crashes, homicide, and suicide. With respect to car crashes, there is a close link
between alcohol-related car crashes and suicide. As a nation, we should be
concerned with all of the above issues, as each of them is preventable. Invariably,
we fail see the deaths of these young men as warning signs of much wider issues
about why they wanted to die, or why they felt the need to kill someone close to
themselves. The argument tendered in this paper is that the same way in which
Māori as a group have been researched, as being “the problem”, equally applies to
the way in which Māori men have continued to be have been researched: Māori
men are only ever portrayed as “the problem” and are never portrayed as part of a
solution subjected to this process as well. The lyrics of a well known song by
UB40, One in Ten, exemplify this notion of being unknown, even though Māori
men do exist in Aotearoa.
