We reported earlier this month that the Science System Advisory Group was calling for submissions on the role of matauranga Māori in government research policy.
The group, led by Sir Peter Gluckman, is seeking public opinions on several issues, including how research involving the study of or the application of mātauranga Māori should be managed and funded.
Submissions on this phase of its consultation closed at 5pm on 4 April.
At the same time as submissions were being gathered by the advisory group, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was sorting out the beneficiaries of the 2025 Te Pūnaha Hihiko: Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund funding round.
This year the Government is investing $3.897 million in 16 projects that (according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) –
… will strengthen capability, innovation capacity and networks between Māori and the science, innovation and technology system, for the benefit of New Zealand.
The 2025 investment round provides this funding through two schemes:
At the same time as submissions were being gathered by the advisory group, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was sorting out the beneficiaries of the 2025 Te Pūnaha Hihiko: Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund funding round.
This year the Government is investing $3.897 million in 16 projects that (according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) –
… will strengthen capability, innovation capacity and networks between Māori and the science, innovation and technology system, for the benefit of New Zealand.
The 2025 investment round provides this funding through two schemes:
- The Connect Scheme ($3.65m) seeks to build new connections between Māori organisations and the science and innovation system.
- The Placement Scheme ($0.25m) seeks to enhance the development of an individual(s) through placement in a partner organisation.
But for how long will this source of funding be continued?
The place of matauranga Māori in the country’s science and research arrangements was raised as part of a question about funding when the Science System Advisory Group (SSAG) sought submissions for phase two of its consultation process.
Phase two “consists of high-level questions regarding the funding tools and mechanisms for the science, innovation and technology sectors”.
Among the questions:
How should research involving the study of or the application of Mātauranga Māori be managed and funded?
It seems matauranga Māori is not necessarily being incorporated within the country’s science system in the advisory group’s considerations. Rather, it is being included in our research system, which (presumably) includes social research.
This suggests a long-overdue decoupling of MM from “science” is on the cards.
That view is reinforced by the Science System Advisory Group’s first report (as PoO reported in February) which proposed a National Research Foundation to administer research funding and to provide a distinct funding stream for mātauranga Māori.
The report said:
There is strong agreement that a Māori-led panel for mātauranga Māori research is needed, and that too would fit in that structure…
The report expanded on this:
New Zealand is a multicultural society based on its bicultural underpinnings established by the Treaty of Waitangi, which is core to New Zealand’s identity. It is essential that the science and innovation system is inclusive and beneficial to the diverse fabric of New Zealand’s society.
Māori have a particular relationship with the Crown, and the context of this relationship extends to the unique knowledge systems that are inherent to Māori history, identity, values, culture, ancestry and economic wellbeing.
There is no debate that research into Māori culture and knowledge is an obligation of the New Zealand research system and that this should be largely determined by experts in mātauranga Māori. We will be recommending a distinct funding stream in the proposed National Research Foundation. Science and mātauranga Māori are distinct ways of knowing.
While we looked into why some people wish to fund mātauranga Māori as science, when it is so different, our attention was drawn to a letter to the editor of the Listener by Ngāi Tahu scholar Athol Anderson, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Canterbury and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago.
He wrote in the issue of September 4 2021:
It is difficult to integrate science and matauranga, a current aspiration, because they have substantial epistemological differences.
Modern matauranga emphasises integration over separation of knowledge categories, received over hypothesised interpretations and experiential over experimental practice.
Science and matauranga are thus intrinsically contradictory approaches to knowledge that resist both combination and interrogation of one by the other. Even attempting to align theoretically rational science with matauranga faces a fundamental problem in the monolithic construction of the latter.
Matauranga is conceived as comprehensive of Māori knowledge and intellectual approaches, both of which range beyond natural and social phenomena into magic, ritual and myth. Consequently, where matauranga equivalence with science is simply assumed, eg, in scientific publication of modern fables about Polynesian voyaging to Antarctica as if they were historical events, both approaches are likely to be compromised.
An alternative is to narrow the scope of matauranga that is brought into comparison, a suggestion with historical precedence.
In the 1840s, Edward Shortland found that Māori recognised three knowledge groups: religious knowledge, myths and legends called korero tara (fables) and traditional histories. Only the last were involved in comparative analysis. Competing histories were tested in public, in effect evaluation of multiple hypotheses, to deter mine where land and other rights lay. Similarly rational approaches are implicit in Māori technology and ec nomic relationships.
Returning to historical categorisation of matauranga could make parallel consideration with science a more credible field of research and instruction than is currently likely.
– AJ Anderson CNZM, FRSNZ, FAHA,FSA Professor Emeritus, Australian National University
PoO also consulted the MBIE website to find the beneficiaries of this year’s Te Pūnaha Hihiko: Vision Mātauranga Capability Fund
Connect Scheme
Hatchery Technology Development for the Aquaculture of Freshwater Species
Contracting organisation: Hokonui Rūnanga Health and Social Services Trust
Funding: $247,060
Term: 2 years
Ka Mate Kāinga Tahi Ka Ora Kāinga Rua – Integrating Mātauranga Māori and Geospatial Science for Climate-Driven Relocation Planning and Settlement Design in New Zealand
Contracting organisation: Lincoln University
Funding: $249,676
Term: 2 years
Mā wai rā te whenua nei e houkura? Developing appropriate soil health assessments and tools to improve soil health management
Contracting organisation: Ngāti Kuku Hapū Trust
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Advancing wildfire strategies with fire science tools: Ngāti Kuri Te Au Ahi Tūroa
Contracting organisation: New Zealand Forest Research Institute Limited
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Increasing engineering and mātauranga capability to develop sustainable natural and built environment solutions for communities to prosper
Contracting organisation: Pūhoro Charitable Trust Board
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Nematode Risk and Diversity in Kūmara Crops: A First Assessment
Contracting organisation: Tahuri Whenua Tapui Limited
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Te Waonui a Wairuakohu: a Bryophyte genomic and botanical databank to support commercialisation of therapeutics from indigenous species
Contracting organisation: Te Puāwaitanga O Ngāti Hinerangi Holdings Trustee Limited
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Te Wānanga o Te Manu: Building a conservation and restoration framework for endangered birds
Contracting organisation: Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu Limited
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Kia ora te whenua, me te moana mō ngā uri whakatupuranga: Mapping Bay of Islands coastlines to inform restoration and aquaculture development
Contracting organisation: Te Runanga o Ngāti Rehia Trust
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Community-based emergency management: Mobilising disaster science for effective Māori response and recovery.
Contracting organisation: Te Tira Whakamātaki
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Ka Tuku Te Toro a Uta, Ka Tuku Te Toro a Tai: Enabling Māori communities to respond to and mitigate the impacts of frequent and severe extreme weather events
Contracting organisation: Te Weu Charitable Trust
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Kaitiaki whai whakamāramatanga: assessing seaweed bloom events for improved ecosystem management
Contracting organisation: The Cawthron Institute Trust Board
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Te ara teitei: Tiakina te karengo, mā mātauranga Māori me te pūtaiao. Enabling management of our native seaweed through data collection and surveyance
Contracting organisation: The Cawthron Institute Trust Board
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Developing natural alternatives to chemical pesticides in mono-cultural cropping systems: Ngā Tamariki o Tāne, e mahi ora ana
Contracting organisation: The New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Te Pūao: protecting New Zealand’s unique biodiversity by developing a framework for cultivation and translocation of threatened NZ flora
Contracting organisation: Whangaroa Papa Hapū
Funding: $150,000
Term: 1 year
Placement Scheme
Pathways to restoration of marine biodiversity in the Ngai Tahu takiwā (area)
Contracting organisation: University of Otago
Funding: $250,000
Term: 2 years
Watch this space for news of the 2026 round.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
It would be interesting to know who in MBIE approved each grant and, in their own words, in plain English, their understanding of just what they were approving. (Interpretation would seem to form a great basis for a school English comprehension test). I suspect receiving a grant comes as a shock in many cases and requires much imagination as to what they might then undertake and which professional language obscurator they might employ to placate any auditor sufficently idle and brave to investigate.
Like all the previous handouts of public funds to extremely dubious projects, is there any follow-up from the public servants to ascertain that the funds were properly used , a proper independent audit, any results publicly published?
Any redress for mispent funds ?
Any rebuke or consequences for the public servants who handed over $4M to play whale song to Kauri trees ?
Do these people have any sympathy for those that are missing out on cancer drugs, or proper housing etc as funding has literally been needed up against a wall ?
And as usual no accountability one presumes. Wasteful spending still rife!
MBIE is what needs to be stopped. What started out as a good idea has turned out to be a gargantuan octopus, responsible to so many ministers it is effectively responsible to no one.
There is a case for Maori "scientists " to be given more millions of dollars, as Maori "science" is way behind western science - they haven't discovered anything yet that the rest of the world hasn't known about for thousands of years.
This comment is strictly tongue in cheek. I really expect it to be proposed by Maori as reasonable grounds for extraordinary funding.
Luxon could fix this problem but he will just look the other way.
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