Professor Jerry Coyne: Repost with evidence - Health New Zealand “encourages” its employees to say Māori prayers daily

NOTE: I put this post up the other day, but then got a very irate email from a Kiwi saying that no, I was WRONG: Health New Zealand, he asserted, never sent around any notice to employees encouraging them to say spiritual prayers (karakia) during the day: a Māori custom. I objected to this as a mixing of religion and government (governmental health efforts), as well as a partial sacralization of indigenous practices. Because of the correspondent’s objection, and because I had no original evidence for such a notice being sent out—just a reader’s assertion—I pulled the post. I also informed a NZ outlet, which had asked to republish my post, to hold off until they could get evidence that such a notice about karakia was indeed circulated.

The organization in NZ has now procured such evidence, so I’m reposting what I took down, but have added the notice (with a link) verifying the government’s urging employees to pray. And to the person who told me in very strong terms that no such notice existed, well, this is a family site and I won’t tell him what to do—but you can guess.

My post, now with the notice and a link to it:

This item, from the Breaking Views website in New Zealand, is one of the rare cases of a Kiwi speaking up against forcible adherence to Māori customs on the job—in this case, saying Māori prayers. First, “Health New Zealand,” the organization in question, is a government agency that, according to its own description:

. . . . will manage all health services, including hospital and specialist services, and primary and community care. Hospital and specialist services will be planned nationally and delivered more consistently across the country. Primary and community services will be commissioned through four regional divisions, each of which will network with a range of district offices (Population Health and Wellbeing Networks) who will develop and implement locality plans to improve the health and wellbeing of communities.

And the author of this short plaint, A. E. Thompson, is described as “a working, tax-paying New Zealander who speaks up about threats to our hard-fought rights, liberties, egalitarian values, rational thinking and fair treatment by the state.” He or she is also courageous! (It’s not clear whether Thompson is employed by Health New Zealand; if so, that won’t be for long!)



The beef is that the government sent out a notice to Health New Zealand’s staff encouraging them to say Māori prayers daily. From the site:

I was made aware that Health New Zealand recently sent an email to its staff as follows:

“We encourage everyone to incorporate karakia daily. To help support you with this we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn karakia. Our resource is designed to give you some options that will enable you to learn and develop your confidence and skills. Note over time we will be adding more recordings for you to choose from.”

The word ‘karakia’ surely must be a Maorified way of saying ‘prayer’, but it seems very difficult and may be impossible to determine whether the term was used before Europeans arrived or if there were other terms that iwi used for their incantations, chants and verbal offerings of respect to their various spiritual entities. Regardless, karakia almost always involve references to supernatural forces whether they be Christian (in practice, they usually end with ‘amine’), pagan or spiritualist. They often involve communication intended for (usually unspecified) long-dead ancestors.

Massey University assistant lecturer Te Rā Moriarty was quoted as saying: “Karakia allow us to continue an ancestral practice of acknowledging orally the divine forces that we, as Māori, understand as the sources of our natural environment. We call these forces atua. So, it is a way to connect through the words of our tūpuna to the world that we live.”

Here’s the notice that the NZ news site that was going to publish my post eventually found. And yes, it is real, and came with a note:

NAME REDACTED tells me she has been advised that an email was sent to employees and invited them to view the message in their browser.

Click the notice to see the announcement—on a Health New Zealand website. The “you can read more” link doesn’t work for me; it apparently requires credentials to access. But the notice says exactly what my informant claimed. Yes, the New Zealand government is urging some of its employees to pray daily.



In the Māori dictionary, “karakia” is defined this way:

(noun) incantation, ritual chant, chant, intoned incantation, charm, spell – a set form of words to state or make effective a ritual activity. Karakia are recited rapidly using traditional language, symbols and structures. Traditionally correct delivery of the karakia was essential: mispronunciation, hesitation or omissions courted disaster. . . . .

So what we have is a government agency “encouraging” its staff to chant to supernatural powers in hope of connecting to one’s ancestors (tūpuna). This encouragement, of course, violates the separation of church and state, and is an unwarranted sop to the indigenous people. (New Zealand, of course, doesn’t have a First Amendment.) It’s one more sign of how the sacralization of the oppressed is spreading in New Zealand. Of course these prayers have no effect, and encouraging the descendants of “colonists” to say them is to force one’s beliefs on others who may not share them.

Thompson has a few words about this:

We can choose not to attend places where the religious practices feel offensive or intolerant to us, and the hosts in those places can exercise similar choice about visiting our spaces.

However, when we are employed and rely upon that employment for our survival, we don’t have the choice to avoid our place of employment. Being employed in a state service under a secular government, workers should have choice over whether they participate even passively in practices involving claimed spiritual entities or supernatural beliefs. Expecting employees to participate denies their right to choose to follow their own religion or philosophical belief and not other people’s, a characteristic of totalitarian rule.

This is especially true in New Zealand, where refusal to sacralize the presumed “oppressed” is sometimes punished severely, with threats of losing one’s job. Thompson’s piece continues:

Sure, the email to health staff only used the word “encourage” but really, when your employer issues an email saying that, you know it will be expected and that ignoring or opposing it will be held against you and may cost you your job.

Pressuring state employees and even private company employees to participate in karakia sets a dangerous precedent in eroding separation between state and religion. As we speak, Muslim immigrants in Europe are deliberately imposing their religious practices on non-Muslim populations by having their distorting loudspeakers call dozens or hundreds of faithful to prostrate themselves in prayer on public footpaths and roadways (even though nearby mosques are plentiful). The practice reflects their belief that Islam is so important that everyone either needs to convert to it or be discriminated against or killed.

As usual, I was sent this with the assumption that the sender would remain anonymous. Thompson, however, clearly has some guts, for even if he/she doesn’t work for Health New Zealand, it’s a huge risk to publish something like this anywhere.

Professor Jerry Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design, a prolific scientist and author. This article was first published HERE