Jerry Coyne: Trying to reconcile indigenous ways of knowing with “white” ways of being in New Zealand

This article actually appeared on the Museum of New Zealand’s website, and is about as explicit an argument for the country adopting indigenous “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori, or MM) as I have found. You may remember that MM is a mixture of practical knowledge, religion, superstition, morals, teleology and guidelines for living. Despite this mixture, there has been a constant battle to get MM taught as coequal with modern science, though the argument has euphemistically changed to coequal “ways of knowing.”

The “coequal” bit derives from a slanted interpretation of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (the sacred “Te Tiriti” that you encounter in all of this literature), a treaty that said nothing about schools teaching equal amounts of Māori or “Western” knowledge. But that’s how it’s interpreted, for Māori see coequal teaching as a way to retain power in their society.

The problem is that MM is not a “way of knowing” in any scientific sense, for it lacks explicit tools for finding out truths about the universe. Any “way of knowing” that relies on superstition and legends cannot possibly be coequal with modern science, though it can be usefully taught in sociology or anthropology classes. In the article below (click to read) several white women (“Pākehā “, meaning a New Zealander of European descent) and one Māori woman discuss how they can create a teaching site that centers MM.

The conclusion: white “ways of being” are not good ways to teach Māori “ways of knowing.” In other words, only Māori should control the teaching of MM and, further, the Pākehā corrupted their society and distorted their ways of knowing (the piece is imbued with victimology). When you read it, you may well come to the conclusion that my NZ correspondent did when he/she sent me this piece:

This blog from our national Museum is a good example of the extent to which Critical Social Justice Ideology has deranged our institutions:

Click below to read:


Click to read

The aim:

Two wāhine from different backgrounds reflect on their growth developing Ko Au Te Taiao, an online learning resource that seeks to centre mātauranga Māori values. As Mero Rokx and Sarah Hopkinson worked through the complexities of this project, they discovered much more about themselves and their relationships to each other, place, and the cosmos. In this article, the co-authors consider ways of working together that enable authenticity and provide reflective questions for other practitioners embarking on similar kaupapa [policies or proposals].

Rokx is Māori and Hopkinson Pakeha, here is the photo they provide with caption. Rokz sports a chin tattoo, something that is not rare in Māori women but I thought I should explain to readers who haven’t seen them.



The authors begin with a long recitation of their backgrounds. The piece is heavily larded with Māori words, but fortunately most of them can be translated (not always accurately) with a click on the website.

The Treaty is of course of central importance here, for you can’t teach MM without mentioning Te Tiriti as the rationale:

Ko Au Te Taiao centres Te Tiriti o Waitangi and aims to support the broadening of perspectives among teachers and learners throughout Aotearoa [New Zealand]. It is an online resource providing teaching and learning activities for connecting with te taiao. It is far from perfect, but in the attempt, a great deal of lessons have been learnt.

In creating Ko Au Te Taiao, we have discovered more about ourselves, our relationships to te taiao and the work we do at Te Papa. The collaborative and organic nature of its design has resulted in the development of a taonga that carries the mauri of all those that contributed, it is living evidence of the process becoming the outcome.

“Mauri” is the teleological Māori term for “vital essence,” and in indigenous ways of knowing it is explicitly teleological, with everything having a vital essence of life force. This emphasis on mauri, though ok here, is one thing that makes MM unsuitable for being taught as equivalent to modern science. Nor can MM really be a “way of knowing” since there is no evidence for a “mauri” in science.

There is a lot of this kind of stuff from the authors. Mero says this, among other things:

One of the beautiful things about whakataukī is the way that they expose perspectives through interpretation. Ko au te taiao, ko te taiao ko au is much deeper than the expression ‘I am nature’.

Ko au – I am.

I am the legacy of my ancestors – tūpuna who go as far back as the beginning of time, and beyond. I am Papatūānuku, I am Ranginui, and I am everything that exists between them. The innate philosophy that I have of being a descendant of the earth, the stars, and the sky is what ko au te taiao, ko te taiao ko au means to me.

Ko au – I am.

I am a mother, he ūkaipō. I reflect on my role as a mother, and the inherent obligation of continuing the legacy passed down to me. I feed my offspring into the night, such as the expression ‘he ū-kai-pō’, both fuel to physically grow, and knowledge to understand the responsibilities that they will inherit as being descendants of Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

And Sarah says this:

Ko Sarah Hopkinson tōku ingoa. My ancestors came from England, Wales, and Norway. I grew up at the ankles of Taranaki on Ngāti Ruanui and Te Atiawa whenua. I am a māmā, a strategy creator, a curriculum designer, an urban farmer, a storyteller, and earth dreamer. I have been working alongside Te Papa Learning to develop online resources that connect schools across the motu with Collections Online. Mero and I have co-developed Ko Au Te Taiao, the latest resource from Te Papa Learning.

With that self-identification out of the way, they reflect on why MM simply cannot be taught in a “white” framework, whatever that is.

There has been momentum in recent years, through both the Ministry and NZQA, to recognise the equal status of mātauranga Māori in schools. It is a lofty ambition, and one that deserves attention. But it comes with considerable challenges, not least of which is that almost 75% of teachers in schools are Pākehā, and mātauranga Māori belongs with hapū, iwi, and those who whakapapa Māori. There is a tension and challenge between these two truths.

Note first that MM and (presumably) modern science are considered “two truths”. But MM is in no sense a monolithic “truth”! Note too the “equal status” to be recognized for MM. But equal to what? Clearly it must be an “equal status as a way of knowing”, and that really means science. But the paragraph also implies that MM cannot be properly taught by white people, or in a framework of white methods of acquiring knowledge and teaching about it. This is a clever strategy, because it prevents students from being exposed to MM and modern science by the same teachers. It is a way to gain power.

And Sarah comes precisely to that conclusion. I started out bolding bits of this, but I bolded nearly the whole thing. So I’ll go ahead and do it, as this is the heart of the piece, and here is its main conclusions:

Through the process, I have learnt that:

• Mātauranga Māori values are informed by practice that is led by Māori, rather than by what might be learnt abstractly.
• Knowledge is deeply place-based and has evolved from embodied ways of living in relationship with te taiao, over generations.
• There is no fixed content, no singular truth or universally accessible information that is available to all.

I think there are lots of Pākehā, like me, who support the vision of Aotearoa being a place in which te ao Māori is revered by all, cultivated and celebrated. An Aotearoa in which indigenous ways of knowing lead us forward.

I also think that many of us are still realising that there is really no way to do this inside Pākehā systems as they stand. Put simply, Māori ways of knowing are not best supported by Pākehā ways of being. And knowing this, if someone asked us to start the project again, Ko Au Te Taiao would almost certainly not be on a website. It’s somewhat of an oxymoron.

So for me, alongside a commitment to centring mātauranga Māori, there also needs to be an acknowledgement that we cannot do this inside Pākehā models of transmission. And I don’t want to write myself out of employment here, but perhaps Pākehā like me are not that useful in the design of new ways of being. We just don’t know what we don’t know. And that’s okay. It’s important we accept the un-knowing.

The conclusion then is that European New Zealanders simply can’t get near MM because they don’t have the “right model of transmission” and never will. But since MM has coequal status, this gives Māori control of half of the educational system, at least as far as “ways of knowing” are concerned. Yet Europeans constitute 67,8% of New Zealanders, Maori 17.8%, Asians 17.3%, and other Pacific peoples 8.9%. (Māori is also spoken as a daily language by only 4% of New Zealanders—the same as Chinese) compared to over 95% who speak English. Clearly the indigenous peoples are asking for a huge inequity in education, but of course they use the Treaty of Waitangi to buttress their aims to transform education.

Finally, behold the claim that “knowledge is deeply place-based”, which is surely not true for modern science and should not be true for MM if it really is a “way of knowing”. As readers have pointed out, any knowledge that purports to be scientific cannot be place-limited, for then every region (e.g., the Pacific Northwest) has a “way of knowing” that applies only to that region. Of course, if your “knowledge” deals with phenomena or things that occur only in your country, then it could be place-based, but that can lead to nonsense like the millions of dollars spent on Māori-guided initiatives like playing whale songs to kauri trees (and rubbing them with whale oil) to cure a fungal disease that is killing those iconic trees of New Zealand. After all, Māori legend tells us that whales and kauri trees used to be brothers, but the whales made off for the sea, and the kauri trees got sick because, as landlubbers, they were lonely. I am not making this up, and see those defending MM emitting an angry response to the post I just linked to.

That dumb kauri/whale project cost $4 million NZ. It is a total waste of money since there is no scientific reason to play songs to trees and rub them with whale oil especially because we know that the cause of “kauri dieback” is an organism that infects the trees underground: oomycetes, a fungus-like eukaryote. If kauri dieback is to be solved, it will be the methods of modern science that does it (indeed, that’s how they identified the cause), not indigenous knowledge, which doesn’t have the tools or tradition to deal with problems like this.

Finally, by saying what’s below, Hopkinson explicitly disqualifies MM as any real kind of knowledge- or truth-generating system.

There is no fixed content, no singular truth or universally accessible information that is available to all.

The conferring of primacy on indigenous knowledge is part of the Critical Social Justice ideology mentioned by my correspondent. The other part is the implication that the Māori are victims of ongoing colonial bigotry, something that may have been true in the past but is not true now: if anything, there is strong affirmative action in the country favoring Māori.

Sarah admits her white guilt, as if the article was a sort of struggle session:

When I take a look around Aotearoa New Zealand, it is abundantly clear that all is not well. The values that my Pākehā ancestors brought to this land have also brought us to this moment, a time where those in kāwanatanga spheres of power are not informed by life giving systems. From inside a Pākehā worldview that continues to individualise, capitalise, exploit and commercialise, it is impossible to be in a living relationship with Papatūānuku.

And note that she has been educated by Mero, who apparently has adopted a role of a Kiwi Robin DiAngelo:

Over the course of developing this resource, Mero and I have begun a wonderful friendship. We have found ourselves talking widely about our histories, experiences, and truths, about what it is to be a Māori woman and what is to be a Pākehā woman. Our lives have deep contrasts and many things in common. Both are delightful to notice. And I have learnt so much about so many of my Pākehā habits and assumptions, because hard things have been able to be talked about with softness.

The last sentence implies that Rokz has, perhaps unconsciously, made white guilt sprout in Hopkinson. Imagine what it would look like if Rokz, the Māori woman, said that she had learned about so many of her Māori habits from Hopkinson, and that was hard for her to hear! That would be pure blasphemy.

At any rate, do remember that this screed appeared on the website of the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington, a wonderful place where I visited for hours. Sadly, like the rest of New Zealand’s scientific establishment, it is in the process of being captured by Social Justice Ideology.

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