Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 8/11/23

Marsden Fund grant goes to Vision Mātauranga project – but what about the place of Māori knowledge in school science?

On yet another day without fresh news on the government’s official website, Point of Order has opted to muse on the future of matauranga Māori in the science curriculum in schools and in the country’s science institutions.

We are not alone. The latest batch of Marsden Fund grants includes $360,000 for a project summed up as:

Vision Mātauranga: is it past its use-by date?

This project may focus essentially on Vision Mātauranga, the government policy which is incorporated throughout the research sector and is administered by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. It aims to “unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge and people”.

But should matauranga Māori be treated as part of the science curriculum in schools?

In a critique of the just-ousted Labour Government’s proposed science curriculum for schools, University of Chicago Professor Jerry Coyne challenged the belief that the world must look to Indigenous knowledge to solve modern-day issues. He named two of these issues (development of vaccines and global warming) and said:

Indigenous knowledge, if relevant, can surely be folded into the science mix to solve problems, but it’s usually more tradition-based than forward looking. And the mention of Mātauranga Māori (MM), or Māori “ways of knowing” is a bit disturbing, for MM that’s more than just empirical, trial-and-error based knowledge that can be taken as part of science.

MM includes, as I keep saying, religion, ethics, morality, tradition, and superstition. It is not a “way of knowing” but a “Māori way of living.”

So what will happen to the school science curriculum under the Luxon government?

We have yet to be told who will be Minister of Education and Minister of Research, Science and Innovation in the new government.

But as Point of Order reported in July, National responded to a leaked draft by saying Labour’s new science curriculum will have a detrimental impact on student outcomes and achievement.

It should be scrapped immediately, National’s Education spokesperson Erica Stanford said.

She noted:

“Right now, only 20 per cent of Year 8 students are meeting the expected standards in science.

“Despite these dire numbers, education experts say that Labour’s leaked new curriculum lacks any meaningful detail on the fundamental knowledge that students need and will worsen the situation. Science teachers say it makes no mention of physics, biology or chemistry.”

Stanford said the curriculum should be explicitly stating what, how and when to teach certain science concepts to students.

“A loose curriculum without a focus on the basics is one reason for New Zealand’s 30-year decline in international measures of student achievement.”

And:

““We need to harness the amazing Kiwi ingenuity that is baked into our kids’ DNA and allow them to be the great thinkers and scientists of the future. This requires a robust national science curriculum that specifies clear, structured learning outcomes for each year group.

“National will rewrite Labour’s curriculum to include clear requirements about the specific knowledge that students should be learning, and when. In science, this means a focus on chemistry, physics and biology.”

Mind you, the statement did not say where matauranga Māori should sit in the school curriculum.

Then there’s the question of the role of matauranga Māori in New Zealand’s science institutions – universities, crown research institutes and so on.

Luxon named Judith Collins his spokesperson for Research, Science, Innovation and Technology.

On Politik, Richard Harman conjectured:

She may see this role as a chance to campaign against Matauranga Māori in science, but the caucus leadership might prefer that she tackle Research and Science Minister Megan Woods over her proposed restructuring of the Crown Research Institutes.

We could find only four press statement in her name on the National Party website.

She hasn’t campaigned against Matauranga Māori but she has said a National government will end New Zealand’s ban on gene editing and genetic modification to unlock enormous benefits for climate change, agriculture and health science

She also expressed disappointment in Labour’s research, science and innovation reforms (announced last December).

Perhaps she – or whoever becomes Minister of Research, Science and Innovation – will wait patiently for guidance from the aforementioned project being funded by the Marsden Fund.

The $360,000 has been secured by a Dr T McAllister at Victoria University of Wellington.

This may be Dr Tara McAllister, described as a freshwater ecologist by training, whose research aims to develop new approaches to managing toxic bloom in rivers to improve access to fresh water

She strives to incorporate mātauranga Māori into her research and she is a co-author of these journal articles this year:

Connecting Science to Indigenous Knowledge: kaitiakitanga, conservation, and resource management

Does the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund deliver on diversity?

Last year, she wrote an article in the Journal of Global Indigeneity headed 50 reasons why there are no Māori in your science department

She said this article aimed to provide insight into the reasons why there are very few Māori in science departments in New Zealand’s universities.

It is a personal, somewhat cheeky, reflection of my own time in science departments. It is also part of my contribution to the debate surrounding the “Listener Letter” and was inspired by reading Professor Alice Te Punga Somerville’s Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook and Jack Remiel Cottrell’s Reasons why I called in sick rather than go to the mihi whakatau for new employees last Friday.

The ‘Listener Letter’ was written by seven professors from the University of Auckland.

The concerns or disquiet that they expressed has become “outrage” in McAllister’s perspective. She writes:

In their letter they expressed their outrage and perhaps their white fragility about the government’s suggested changes to the New Zealand’s National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA) curriculum. Their short, un-peer-reviewed and ill-informed letter attempted to “defend” science from suggested parity with mātauranga Māori. They suggested that “science itself does not colonise” and “Indigenous knowledge [….] falls short of what we can define as science itself” (Clements et al. 2021).

This blatantly racist attack on mātauranga felt very close to home for me and continues to impact me on a very visceral level. This was in part because these professors were my “colleagues”. They were all employed by the same university as me, two were in my department and one of them was my dean at the time. As a Māori scientist, they were attacking my very existence. They were erasing the rich depth of scientific knowledge Māori hold and they were ignoring the colonial history of science.

McAllister says she uses the ‘Listener Letter’ to teach about racism in science.

Among the 50 reasons she gives for there being “no Māori” in science departments, she lists:

• Because your department is full of dusty dinosaurs who don’t believe our tīpuna knew science. Like we navigated across the biggest ocean without science.
• Because how would you like to be the token Māori, a space-invader, an immediate outsider, in a department full of people who don’t think like you or value the same things you do. We aren’t on the same page, let alone the same waka.
• Because you have no understanding of the true history of science. Science as a tool of colonisation. Science as a weapon used to displace, oppress, and murder Indigenous people.
• Because we don’t want to help you superficially gain access to Māori communities and knowledge when your intentions are ambiguous at best. Have you heard of the Tohunga Suppression Act (1907)? Do you know whose stolen land you are standing on? Have you read Decolonising methodologies?
• Because our whakapapa and bodies will not be used superficially to tick your Vision Mātauranga* box. Only to have our ideas and bodies swiftly discarded and disregarded when the cash money comes in.
• Because we don’t want to be complicit in the ongoing colonisation of our own people and knowledge systems.
• Because our simple presence in your department is disruptive. Our presence challenges the small minds of some staff and students. Their misconceptions are challenged by our occupation of spaces that were always reserved for the white, bespectacled, balding scientist wearing socks and sandals. In their minds, we aren’t capable of being intelligent, of having expertise or having something useful to teach them. Our mere presence destroys their preconceived ideas about who we are meant to be and where we belong in society.
• Because the settler scientists in your department are f**king annoying.

Stop joking about colonising Māori scientists.

Stop making racist remarks in the tearoom.

Stop emailing us the night before your funding application is due asking for our CV.

Stop being complicit in our continued silencing.

Stop ticking yes to Vision Mātauranga when you have no connection to Māori or understanding of te ao Māori.

Stop using our values and knowledge superficially when you are a racist clown.

• Because to be the lonely only in the School of Unwelcoming of Whiteness, means death by a million cuts. Cuts which manifest in daily attacks on our wairua, where our continued presence disturbs and unsettles the white hegemony.
• Because you expect too much. You expect us to be a unicorn Māori scientist. To enter the School of Unwelcoming Whiteness you must:

speak te reo like Tā Timoti Karetu,

understand tikanga like Professor Pou Temara,

be an expert in mātauranga Māori like Professor Rangi Mātaamua and of course

sing as well as Moana Maniapoto in case they need a waiata.

Oh, and be an expert in western science.

Also never cause any trouble. Never disrupt whiteness. Be a good maowrie. Nod and smile. No troublemakers allowed.

• Because you are a liar. In the job description you said you valued mātauranga Māori and the Treaty. But you are harbouring “science defenders” in your department who are racist and violent and will hold onto their white privilege and meritocracy with their last dying, unbrushed, breaths.
• Because your department, with a co-opted Māori name that no one can or bothers to pronounce properly is not a fun place.
• Because your department is an

anxious,

bullying,

colonial,

dangerous,

ego-driven,

f**ked up,

gloomy,

hurtful,

isolating,

juvenile,

knavish,

lonely,

monstrous,

nauseating,

offensive,

painful,

questionable,

racist,

sexist,

tiresome,

unbalanced,

venomous,

warlike,

xenophobic,

yucky,

zoo

• Because even though you espouse that you value “manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, and kaitiakitanga”, you wouldn’t recognise real manaakitanga if it was slapping you in the face. He waka eke NO.
• Because we don’t want to be your “dial a Māori”. We don’t want to be in every marketing video, photoshoot, and media campaign to represent the department’s “diversity”. You value our presence in outward-facing diversity campaigns but not at the decision-making tables behind closed doors and behind brick walls.
• Because you want “inclusion”, and we want rangatiratanga.
• Because we are constantly reminded that we don’t belong. Because colonialism is so deeply embedded in science. Because of James Cook Fellowships and the Endeavour Fund. Because all the buildings are named after problematic white men. How long will we be waiting for a building to be named after a Māori scientist?
• Because now there is a Centre for Indigenous Science at the University of Otago lead by Associate Professor Anne-Marie Jackson (University of Otago, 2022) so why would we want to work in your department? Why would we want to work alongside you when we could land our waka on a safe island, with an abundance of resources, likeminded people, a place where we could not only survive but thrive, a respite from the Great White Sharks and a centre that celebrates Māori excellence?

Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton