This paper assays the attitudes of around 200 Māori youth, solicited via an online survey, to purism in Māori vocabulary evolution and to a recurrent purist discourse, generally rendered by indigenous elders, that criticises errors when speaking te reo Māori. It discloses a tension between bolstering purism for the linguistic self-determination of the indigenous collective, and refusing purism on the basis this hinders individuals' linguistic emancipation. On balance, it seems these Māori youth may hold notably less purist attitudes than actual language policy and locally pervasive ideology.