Judy Gill: A Sacred Lie - The Rise Of Spiritual Politics In NZ Education

I am not a political figure. I have never stood for office, never joined a party, never published in any mainstream outlet until recently. I am simply a parent living on Waiheke Island, trying to raise my son in peace, in reason, and in freedom. I do not want my son to attend a Christian school, nor do I want to homeschool him. I want what used to be normal in NZ: a secular, neutral education free from religious or spiritual instruction.

And yet, today, that is no longer available to my child.

Across the country, we are witnessing a quiet transformation of our public education system. It is being remade, not in the image of science, citizenship, or open inquiry, but in the image of a new religion. This belief system is marketed as cultural, sacred, peaceful, and harmonious. It is often referred to using the phrase "Te Ao Māori" — the Māori world view — but what it really represents is the new state religion: a spiritually infused, state-funded ideology now embedded in public schools, early childhood centres, and even professional development for adults.

We are told to chant karakia. We are told to greet the atua. We are told to accept without question the sacredness of rivers, mountains, stars, and genealogies. Our children are not being taught about culture — they are being brought into a way of thinking that is more like religious training than education. It’s a state-funded cult, cloaked in buzzwords from Māori tradition, but driven by control.

The architects of this narrative don’t actually believe it — they fabricated it. Or perhaps some of them do? They believe they whakapapa from gods, that they are descended from atua, and that they have a divine right to rule. That’s not spirituality. That’s narcissism.

Even PE is now spiritual. It’s where students are told to “find their wairua.” It’s not education. It’s a spiritual performance. Te Ao Kori — swinging a poi while connecting with one's wairua — is promoted as a form of enlightenment. This is not Māori tradition. It is a modern invention, a cult ritual disguised as exercise, and its adoption closely mirrors the path yoga once took into Western spirituality.

Let us be clear. Many Māori educators and kaumātua are not pushing this ideology. Many teach traditional skills, uphold tikanga, and serve their neighbours with warmth and humility. They are not the ones writing policy.

That role belongs to a very different class: the Māori political elite. The ideologues. Rawiri Waititi, Kiri Tamahere-Waititi, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, John Tamihere, Willie Jackson, Tipene O'Regan, Eru Kapa-Kingi. These are not educators. They are power-brokers who use the language of spirituality and culture to entrench political control.

Every religion needs its prophets, and this one has found its theologians in Professor Margaret Mutu and Professor Rangi Matamua. Matariki — now a state holiday — is presented not as astronomy, but as the worship of nine star deities, the “eyes of Tāwhirimātea.”

The public is led to believe these teachings come from ancient tribal consensus. They don’t. They come from a small class of spiritual-political elites — individuals with fractional Māori ancestry, fluent in politics, not whakapapa. Their authority comes not from iwi mandate, but from state recognition and academic platform.

They argue that whakapapa is divine and spiritually transmitted — regardless of DNA, bloodline, or 23andMe. But what they are promoting is not traditional, not tribal, and not scientific. It’s a belief system, rebranded as culture and enforced as public policy.

Today, even our museums are being transformed. At MOTAT and the Stardome Observatory, visitors are welcomed with narratives that fuse astronomy with Māori mythology — presenting Te Ao Māori spiritual cosmology alongside scientific explanation, with little distinction between myth and measurable fact. In such settings, how is a four-year-old meant to develop scientific literacy?

This ideology is strongest not in Te Tai Tokerau or Tairāwhiti — the so-called Māori heartlands — but in Grey Lynn, Mt Albert, and Wellington, among white, upper-middle-class New Zealanders. These are the tangata Tiriti — the progressive Green voters who abandoned Christianity but couldn’t abandon the need to feel righteous. They replaced crosses with crystals, and churches with karakia.

But this is not just guilt. It’s ambition. These are not naïve parents. They are strategic. They see where power is shifting. They know that in the NZ of tomorrow, advancement — in media, academia, education, and the public service — will require cultural fluency in the rituals, symbols, and language of Te Ao Māori. So they are grooming their children to speak the liturgical code, recite the karakia, and perform the correct rituals.

These children — white, or one-drop Māori — will become the future CEOs, principals, and policy directors. The ethnicity box may be ticked, but the power base will remain unchanged. They will be white, or close to it, and they will lead institutions that claim to be indigenous, decolonised, and spiritually grounded.

You don’t have to be Māori to enter bilingual or immersion classrooms — and under the New Zealand Bill of Rights, you shouldn’t have to be. But in practice, these classrooms are not being filled by children from Te Tai Tokerau or Tairāwhiti. They are being filled by urban, white and one-drop Māori families, racing to secure their children a place in the new cultural order.

You’re not decolonising. You’re creating a new priesthood — based on allegiance, not race.

You are not helping Māori. You are not dismantling colonialism. You are spiritualising the curriculum, installing a state ideology, and building a career path for your own children through cultural symbolism.

We must demand a return to rational, secular education. No more prayers in ECE. No more wairua-speak in PE. No more compulsory karakia in classrooms.

If you believe in science, reason, and the right not to be spiritually indoctrinated — now is the time to speak. And help make NZ education secular again.

If this message resonates with you, please share it. Every voice counts.

Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.