The Historic Value of Indigenous Knowledge
Dr. Robert Bartholemew published a thought-provoking piece in Newsroom last week, in which he made several worthwhile points (Bartholemew, 2025). Indeed, today we do see greater awareness of the wealth of accumulated knowledge that allowed Indigenous people to adapt and thrive - from star maps for navigation - to recognition of celestial patterns that marked the passage of time. Surely, Indigenous knowledge systems (perhaps, “belief systems” is a more appropriate term where the embodied “knowledge” has not been verified) are part of the great history of humankind and retain cultural, social, historic and religious significance even today.
As one example, here in New Zealand Māori sustainable resource management took the form of rāhui, or temporary bans, to protect depleted ecosystems. Undoubtedly, such knowledge was immensely valuable to the communities who evolved that knowledge, and enabled them to survive and flourish.
Dr. Bartholemew reminds us that in-depth botanical knowledge was the basis for rongoā Māori, or traditional Māori medicine. Probably most or all Indigenous medicine is based to some extent on knowledge of local plants and trees, some of which offer therapeutic properties. Apart from myths and legends and false notions about the world, Indigenous knowledge systems did embody accumulated understanding of the environments in which those communities lived.
Indigenous Medicine?
However, he tells us that until the impact of the Māori lunar calendar on health is validated, patients should be encouraged to use it in conjunction with scientifically-supported therapies. Why so? Common sense suggests that therapies that are limited to bodywork, herbal preparations and prayer cannot reduce the effectiveness of conventional medicine and could provide emotional benefit. But here, if we valorize unverified medical treatments of the distant past and stray beyond such harmless interventions, then potentially we take a very big risk. Worse, we encourage others to take that risk.
To be clear, Dr. Bartholemew is not advocating the use of Indigenous medicine in place of conventional medicine, but his words could be misinterpreted. In a comment on his own article that he provided following publication, he states that giving Indigenous knowledge systems parity with science is patronising because like the maramataka, while they can be complementary and embody elements of science, in New Zealand this approach has led to confusion and placed peoples’ health at risk from unproven therapies.
In the ongoing debate on equality of Indigenous knowledge and modern science and medicine, a pervasive confusion results from conflation of knowledge or belief with the creative process of generation of knowledge and its validation. In any case, if the general public and even decision-makers in our education and other institutions knew more about science, then perhaps they would value it more and be less inclined to argue for equality of status between the untested knowledge and beliefs of centuries ago and modern world science. The same applies for medicine, in which we see considerable naivete, where sometimes New Zealand’s media peddles the dangerous message that Indigenous knowledge of the "ancients" is a positive choice for serious illness when most certainly it is not (for example, see Parvez and Rishi, 2019; Tyson, 2023; Lillis, 2024).
The Lunar Calendar for Fishing and Agriculture?
In fact, there is scientific truth in the idea that some fish are more active or abundant during certain tidal fluctuations which of course are influenced by the moon’s gravitational attraction (see Gill, 1878 and Mayer, 1912). Such knowledge may well have allowed Indigenous people, including Māori, to predict good and bad fishing days. Dr. Bartholemew cites two studies in which a link was indeed found between a popular Māori fishing calendar and fish catch.
The idea of fishing by the phases of the moon, or the lunar cycle, was common across the world of centuries or even millennia ago, and was not exclusive to any one culture. Indeed, the lunar cycle is linked with the oceanic tides and surely the tides do influence the success or otherwise of fishing. Indeed, the art of observing the movements of fish and game is as old as fishing and hunting.
The scientific issue here is whether we perceive a "mystical aura" from the moon, or whether we observe simply the natural effects of the tides or moonlight. Plankton, for example, rise and fall in the open ocean as the intensity of light at depth changes. The same effect can be achieved using bright lights - which is how Mediterranean fishermen fished centuries ago, and Japanese squid boats do today.
Dr. Bartholemew states that for centuries a bedrock of Mātauranga Māori has been the lunar calendar or maramataka (literally ‘the turning of the moon’) which formed an integral part of Māori life and was used to regulate hunting, fishing, planting and harvesting. He reminds us that similar versions of the calendar can be found throughout Polynesia where they reflect local conditions. He asserts that as Māori had no written language, the calendar was essential for monitoring seasonal changes, the migration of fish and birds and the flowering of plants.
Lunar calendars also dictated when to plant and harvest, and many Indigenous communities have used them. They are still used today. Dr. Bartholemew believes that monitoring the lunar cycle brought practical value in the struggle to survive. Perhaps so, but acknowledging genuine benefit to fishing, it is not clear what practical value was imparted to agriculture, for example. In fact, many studies have demonstrated that the lunar cycle exerts no discernible influence on plant growth and physiology and therefore has no effect on the cultivation of crops (e.g. Mayoral et al., 2019).
Validate Indigenous Knowledge before you Recommend It
Dr. Bartholemew believes that because many Kiwis use the calendar to guide their physical and mental wellbeing, it is essential that Indigenous therapies are evaluated through scientific method. He says that the impact of the Māori lunar calendar on health must be validated and that until such validation occurs, patients can be encouraged to use the maramataka in conjunction with scientifically-supported therapies. However, where is the evidence that New Zealanders should be encouraged to use any form of Indigenous calendar or, for that matter, Indigenous or folk therapy in addition to scientifically-supported therapies?
In fact, many health agencies warn against the adoption of Indigenous therapies. As one example, New Zealand’s Cancer Society states clearly that alternative therapies that are used instead of conventional medicine can give rise to serious problems and allow cancer to spread. Further, people who use alternative therapies without conventional treatment are more likely to die (Cancer Society, 2025). Unfortunately, adoption of non-conventional therapies encourages some unwell people to reject conventional medicine altogether (e.g. Schmerling, 2025) and doing so can indeed lead to unfortunate outcomes.
The Cancer Society reiterates that alternative therapies can be harmful and may delay or stop effective treatment. They say that there is no evidence that any type of complementary or alternative therapy prevents or cures cancer. Further they warn that, as with other treatment types, Rongoā Māori and Pasifika traditional healing methods may relieve symptoms but can interfere with conventional cancer treatments (Cancer Society, 2025).
Finally, Dr. Bartholemew asserts that we owe it to our whānau to determine the efficacy of these treatments and that doing so is a call for collaboration between different systems of knowledge. We agree that such treatments must be validated so that the public has access to the evidence before opting either for or against Indigenous methods, but what if those treatments are demonstrated to impart little complementary value or even no value whatsoever? Worse, what if they act to diminish the efficacy of conventional treatments?
Give the Public only the Best Medicine
We, the authors of this article, are not medical professionals but one of us is a senior biological scientist and the other has interacted with hundreds of cancer patients over the last decade and has attempted to provide support (see Lillis, 2025). We know that unwell people need the very best of modern medicine and that the last thing they need is un-validated folk or Indigenous treatments.
In the world of the twenty-first century, we should be thankful for all that science and technology have done for humanity, but unfortunately we live in an era of managerialism and both uninformed and captured media. We have executives in charge of our newspapers, radio and television, journalists who publish potentially influential opinion pieces on areas in which they have little or no competence, “professional managers” who manage areas of work in which they too have little or no competence, ideology-driven education institutions and universities in particular, and various activists and ideologues - all pushing unsubstantiated “knowledge” of half-a-dozen centuries ago, and even ideas relating to public health that are demonstrably incorrect and carry risk. They do not know how dangerous they are!
References
Bartholemew, Robert (2025). Different systems of knowledge – together, stronger
Cancer Society (2025). Complementary, traditional and alternative therapies
Gill, W. W. (1878). Fishing at Penrhyns Island, South Pacific. The Leisure hour: an illustrated magazine for home reading. 1878 Nov 30(1405):758-9.
Lillis, David (2024). Science and the New Zealand Media
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/09/david-lillis-science-and-new-zealand.html#more
Lillis, David (2025). Non-Conventional Medicines: Choices for All?
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2025/04/david-lillis-non-conventional-medicines.html
Mayer, A. G. (1912). The Annual swarming of the Atlantic Palolo. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Zoological Congress, Boston, 19-24 August, 1907 (Vol. 7, p. 147). The University Press.
Scott, G.C. (1869). Fishing in American waters. Harper & brothers.
Mayoral, O., Solbes, J., Cantó, J and Pina, C. (2020). What Has Been Thought and Taught on the Lunar Influence on Plants in Agriculture? Perspective from Physics and Biology. Agronomy 2020,10, 955; doi:10.3390/agronomy10070955
Parvez. M. K. and Rishi, V. (2019). HerbDrug Interactions and Hepatotoxicity. Curr. Drug Metab. 20: 275–82.
https://www.eurekaselect.com/article/97525
Tyson, Jessica (2023). Therapeutic Products Bill: ‘Crown has no place in regulating rongoā’ says expert. New Zealand Herald. 9 May 2023.
Brian Jones obtained his PhD at Victoria University on diseases of New Zealand commercial shellfish. He worked for MAF at the high containment Biosecurity laboratory at Wallaceville before retiring in 2018 and today is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at Murdoch University, Western Australia.
10 comments:
Why are you only considering Maori indigenous beliefs? It would be more profitable to consider European indigenous knowledge, say, around the time of Stonehenge. That was at least going somewhere. Your approach seems racist to me.
Good healthy science (?)/ belief system to kill the fittest men on battlefields to the extent your breeding capacity and people resources are close to irreversible decline, abort
pregnancies as birth control and kill baby girls. The wise bit was eating dead warriors in whole or in part - vital protein in an otherwise nutritionally limited diet.
Very sophisticated - not.
The calendrical and daily time-keeping systems we use are imbued with religious precepts including Babylonian ones. Let's adopt the French revolutionary calendar introduced in 1793. It has 12 30-day months with intercalary days to make up the shortfall. And of course the 10-hour (each divided into 100 minutes, each divided into 100 seconds) clock.
They make sense....... dunno why their use fizzled out within a few years.
Hi Barrie.
In our article we discuss Indigenous calendars and therapies generally, not only Maori calendars and therapies. We agreed that Indigenous calendars, including Maori calendars, embodied useful information for prediction but also embodied false ideas – especially about agriculture. We noted that Maori calendars were useful for fishing and monitoring of the natural world. We said that Rongoa Maori and other Indigenous medicines can complement conventional medicine in supporting emotional health but should not replace conventional medicine.
Much of our article is generic to Indigenous knowledge and calendars everywhere and we mention Maori calendars and therapies specifically - only because they are advocated here in New Zealand. We feel that the general public should be aware of the risks that are posed when they are told that Indigenous medicines are as good as conventional medicine – as articulated on ACC’s website.
There is a “big picture” here that relates to caring for very sick people and giving them the best possible chances, and those who advocate Indigenous or folk therapies could learn a lot from spending a day or two observing daily life in a cancer ward at their local hospital.
David
This isn't about knowledge or beliefs; it is about trying to make Maoris feel good about themselves and their primitive beliefs and patronizing them in the process. Do you think they do not know that?
Barrie.
Indigenous knowledges, including matauranga Maori, embody many lovely ideas and they must be retained. But we are seeing indiginizing, by force, of education and much else. A colleague, who is a very well-known professor in the physical sciences at a New Zealand university which has campuses in Palmerton North, Wellington and Auckland, was ordered recently to "get on the waka or face the consequences". David
David,
Thank you for your note and I take your point about matauranga Maori. I find the story of the professor disappointing. I just ask that we keep it real. I will try to give an example.
I am interested in the psychology of mythology and I note with interest the similarly of Maori and Greek gods which many psychologists write about. Maori mythology has largely come down to us through European writers, such as George Grey and A. W. Reed. However, there are recent books which are revisions of these writers by Maoris or are the myths retold by Maori writers.
There really is not now Maori mythology. It would be false for me to try to apply psychology to these revised or rewritten versions. I suspect much the same for the other Maori elements you have mentioned.
While Maori beliefs may be important to some, I doubt that they are of general interest. I also expect that identifying what they actually are, what they mean, and their relevance today is problematic.
Nevertheless, if there are elements of Maori beliefs that apply to, say, medicine, then write them up and publish in a scholarly journal where they can be peer reviewed and potentially adopted universally. If that were to happen, it would not be particularly important as to where the idea came from. The Maori element would be of secondary importance at most.
Much of the present fuss about Maori is not right and I am reacting to that.
Barrie
Thanks, Barrie. The treatment of my colleague is more than disappointing. Surely, we want our university campuses to be welcoming to students of all backgrounds, religions and ethnicities. However, the same university has pushed a number of staff out of employment - quite possibly for standing against enforced indigenization and associated diminishment of academic standards. David
I have a NZ curriculum for primary schools 1948 , which in social studies has reference to the pupil becoming aware of the Maori before the 'White Man' came: topics such as how the Maori planted kumara, their food , clothing and houses, tools,canoes , games , and legends .
Also mentioned in a heading great stories were topics such as : David and Goliath ; Ulysses; Horatius ; Caractacus ;Gregory the Great and the Slave Children; Robin Hood ; Roland and Oliver; St Francis of Assis; William Tell; Nelson; Captain Cook ;Grace Darling; etc.
Further mentioned in the Social Studies syllabus is the object of this subject which was to promote through stories of men and women of past times to set before children ideals of brotherhood , truth , justice , tolerance , courage , unselfishness and responsibility to others.
Oh for a return of this country to true liberalism in education instead of the present indoctrination with an ethical vacuum-no moral compass for children. ,That's the present illiberal progressivism for you. Damnable and actually preventing progress in all areas of life.
Reference :Revised Syllabuses NZ Education Department , May 1948
Any early NZ history I have read recounts sick maori being confined to the old derelict whare and isolated, and they either recovered or didnt
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