Barrie Davis: Matauranga Maori is a Myth

The New Zealand Parliament is now receiving advice which is informed by maturanga Maori, New Zealand universities are offering courses on maturanga Maori, and New Zealand corporations are incorporating maturanga Maori in their business practices. What is maturanga Maori and why have our institutions accepted it so readily?

Professor Sir Sidney (Hirini) Moko Mead, a foundation professor of Maori studies at Victoria University and a prolific author, has this year published Matauranga Maori, a book about Maori knowledge. It is a companion volume to his 2003 book Tikanga Maori on Maori practices and values. I will consult his Matauranga Maori to consider the above question.

The word ‘matauranga’ is a nominalization of the verb ‘mātau’, which means: 1. ‘to know,’ or ‘to be acquainted with’; 2. ‘to understand’; or 3. ‘to feel certain of’. The suffix ‘ranga’ is a nominalizing ending that turns verbs into nouns, often indicating a process or result. The combined meaning ‘matauranga’ literally translates to ‘knowledge’ or ‘understanding’ which are abstract nouns that name a quality or state of mind.

Nominalizations turn active, ongoing processes into static concepts, making them appear fixed and unchangeable. For example, instead of describing how two people interact, we might say, “Their relationship is broken”, treating the relationship as a fixed state rather than something dynamic. Nominalizations are not just grammatical forms – they are world view containers. Every abstract noun locks away an action, a choice, a dynamic event. Spotting them is the first step in unlocking the complexity beneath.

Mead confirms the static nature of the Maori conception of the world: “When we as Maori talk about our world view, we use the phrase ‘te ao Maori’ to explain our way of thinking, feeling and seeing Maori ways of knowing and being. … I propose that there was and is only one te ao Maori. There is not an old one and a new one.” (p. 116-7)

Mead further explains, “te ao Maori is grounded in matauranga Maori, and in my view there is only one matauranga Maori, which we are recovering and bringing back into our lives.” (p. 116) Moreover, “Some matauranga is restricted, and classified as tapu; formerly, such matauranga was taught either at a whare wananga or some other place.” The whare wananga (traditional Maori knowledge house) was protected by Rongo, the “god of the kumara” (p. 12)

Maori Mythology is Maori Knowledge

Mead says that Maori knowledge is based on mythological creation stories,

“I have endeavoured to explain the philosophical basis of matauranga, commencing with our origin stories, to understand where our matauranga came from by identifying which gods of the Maori pantheon imparted matauranga to us mere humans.” (p. 2)

Mead explains, “The language is the expressive tool of the knowledge system … When there is no writing system, the highly valued portions of matauranga sit in the minds of the community’s knowledgeable persons: the tohunga (priest, an expert and skilled practitioner) and rangatira (cultural leader).” (p. 11)

The Maori knowledge that was preserved in writing was authored by Europeans (p. xvi), such as George Grey (1812-98), J.S. Polock (1838), G.F. Angas (1847), Elsdon Best (1856-1931), Percy Smith (1840-1922), Raymond Firth (1929), and A.H. Reed and A.W. Reed.

The early recordings by Europeans have been revised and retold by contemporary Maori writers. For example: Treasury of Maori Folklore by A.W. Reed in 1963 was revised by Ross Calman and republished as the Reed Book of Maori Mythology in 2004, and again with further revisions by Calman in 2021; and Myths and Legends of Maoriland by A.W. Reed in 1946 was revised by Buddy Mikaere as Purakau: Legendary Maori Tales in 2025. There is also Purakau: Maori Myths Retold by Maori Writers, edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka and published in 2019. And instead of A.H. & A.W. Reed there are now Raupo publications.

The 1844 Dictionary of the Maori Language by W. Williams was revised in five editions by the Williams’s until 1917. It was subsequently revised in 1957 and again in 1971 by an Advisory Committee lead by Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones whose image now graces the jacket cover of the book. That is the 7th edition, which is frequently referenced by Mead in Matauranga Maori.

Mead also relies on European writers and says,

“A valuable portion of the matauranga was recorded by Elsdon Best based on his fieldwork among the Tuhoe people and other elders of the Mataatua waka tribes from Te Moana-nui-a-Toi (the coastal Bay of Plenty) in Aotearoa. His fieldwork interviews were conducted during the period 1895 to 1911, when he worked as an Officer of Lands for the Survey Department. Later he published a series of books and monographs that covered a wide range of matauranga subjects… [Best] amassed a vast amount of information that provides a taumata (base or platform) from which to launch further research…” (p. 82)

“Best stated and declared that the data collected and recorded should be genuine and empirical. In his great work Tuhoe, the children of the mist he acknowledged his main informants and published their names.” (p. 84)

“In referring to Tuhoe sources, Best refers to Tutakangahau (p. 26) in this way:

‘Said an old Tuhoe native to the writer.’

“In other places there are specific references to Tutakangahau, such as (p. 32):

‘… given by Tutakangahau, of the Tuhoe tribe …’.” (p. 85)

“Thus, when Best claims the data he published was ‘genuine’, as noted in the title of his book The Astronomical Knowledge of the Maori – Genuine and Empirical, we can understand why he says that and can agree with him because he identified his informants.” (p. 85)

Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau of Maungapohatu

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman in his 2007 doctoral dissertation “Best of both worlds: Elsdon Best and the metamorphosis of Maori spirituality” (here and here), says Best’s principal Tuhoe source was Tutakangahau of Maungapohatu (1830-1908). Holman subsequently published his thesis in 2010 as Best of Both Worlds: The Story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau.

Although Mead refers to both Best and Tutakangahau, he does not reference Holman’s thesis in Matauranga Maori.

Holman says, “Put bluntly, Best’s vision of Tutakangahau is wrong: flawed and incomplete. Best sought ‘the old-time Māori’ among modern Māori: late 19th century political and religious actors. ‘Old Tu’ in fact lived a modern life …” (p. 276) Best’s romantic vision of the primitive surviving ‘mythopoetic’ (myth producing) ‘old-time Māori’ conflicts with the political reality in which Maori were fully engaged. (p. 3) “There is no possibility of a late 19th century Māori epistemology unmediated by Pākehā influence”. (p. 6)

Holman details Tutakangahau’s political life in Chapter 6 of his dissertation where he describes Tutakangahau as “a pragmatist with a long record of local political action and skills in statecraft and diplomacy.” (p. 379) “Those who read what remains in the record of the historical man, Tutakangahau, can decide how radically this figure destabilises Best’s ‘Old Tu’ and the fictionalised ‘Children of the Mist’.” (p. 13) “That mode of being was simply not possible for him, gone by the time he was born. Such a flaw in Best’s reading of the Māori situation at the time of his anthropological studies becomes a fault line that runs beneath his global assumptions about who Māori were in the traditional world prior to European contact.” (p. 329)

Holman claimed that Tutakangahau was a co-creator of Best’s ethnography (p. 46), but that Best and Tutakangahau were going in opposite directions: “Best and [Percy] Smith use whakapapa (genealogies) to locate Māori in the sweep of a secular Western chronology and in a mystic past. Tutakangahau and the prophet Rua Kenana use the biblical traditions of genealogy and prophecy to align that past with a literate, Christian modernity …”. (p. 9)

Holman showed that, “Through his scholarly and popular writings, Elsdon Best’s researches into traditional Māori culture and lifeways entered the national bloodstream, in spite of the post-mortem criticism he received from a new breed of anthropologists. … In spite of the fact that Best’s star has waned even further since the Māori renaissance of the 1970s, his work is never far from the surface in Māori visions of themselves and Pakeha constructs of Māori identity.” (p. 330) Holman complains, “… there is no indication that this was the understanding of a man like Tutakangahau. There are no verbatim transcripts to consult, only Best’s reframing of the information.” (p. 341) Holman claims that “Best is a living presence in Maori conceptions of their traditional being in pre-contact society.” (p. 375)

When considering the first edition of Mead’s Tikanga Maori (2003), Holman says, “In obtaining information and ideas from teachers such as Barlow and Mead, students and teachers throughout New Zealand are also absorbing Best.” (p. 374)

So, not only is the matauranga documented by Europeans being repeatedly revised in an attempt to make it more like the traditional matauranga Maori, but the supposedly traditional matauranga Maori on which those revisions are based had already been revised by both the early European writers and their Maori sources according to Western Christian tradition.

Maori Gods

Nevertheless, Mead says, “Best thought the data referring to Māori lore was puerile…” (p. 86) It is easy to see why Best thought that: If there are no Maori gods, just as there are no Greek gods and no Christian angels, then it is reasonable to think it childishly silly and trivial to believe that there can be matauranga Maori from Maori gods.

Mead says there are two creation stories in matauranga Maori: “In The Maori, Best (1941, Vol I: 85-91) explained that there was an inferior version based on Ranginui and Papatuanuku as the creators and a superior version based on Io as the creator. … Today the more popular version is the Ranginui and Papatuanuku creation story. Variations of the story appear across the Pacific Ocean, in other Polynesian societies.” (p. 91)

When studying the gods (atua) Ranginui and Papatuanuku, Mead says the intention is twofold, “First, there is matauranga in whakapapa, that is in knowing where we as mere mortals descend from and, in effect, humanizing our understanding and connection to nga rangi tuhaha (the cosmos, the universe). Second, the creation of all things were gifts from our atua who ultimately came from our primal parents, Ranginui and Papatuanuku, and everything that was created within nga rangi tuhaha has a purpose that influences the ecosystem on which we humans rely to exist here on Papatuanuku.” (p. 81)

Mead goes on to say:

“The noted tohunga Pio of Ngati Awa wrote some statements about te whanau marama. Best (1955: 31) recorded these statements and translated them:

‘There is no limit to the world according to Maori belief, and I was taught that there are persons in the heavens. When sky and earth were separated some of the offspring of Rangi were left on high, as Whaitiri, and Poutini, Tautoru [Orion], Matariki [the Pleiades], Tama-rereti [the Scorpion], Whanui [Vega], Kopu [Venus], Autahi [Canopus or Aldebran], Te Mangoroa [the Milky Way], Te Whakaruru-hau [the Magellanic Clouds], Takero and Tangorango, the multitudinous stars of the heavens, who dwell there as super-normal beings.’

“The heavenly bodies are the children of Ranginui and Papatuanuku. That means the heavenly bodies listed by Pio were regarded as ‘persons’ with a whakapapa that connects Ranginui and Papatuanuku. The heavenly bodies were treated as whanau, and extended family.” (p. 98)

God Concepts

For Mead, there are gods who are envisioned in the image of humans. That notion is from a period of European mythology when the Greeks followed their gods prior to the Presocratic period of the 6th century BC. Some Presocratics subsequently critiqued religious and social norms which led to early ethical thought.

The Presocratic Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 560 - c. 470 B.C.) wryly noted that if animals could draw pictures of gods as men do, then “horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses, and the oxen as similar to oxen, and they would make the bodies of the sort which each of them had.” That is, like Mead, Xenophanes claimed that humans perceive gods as similar to themselves, so that “mortals suppose that gods are born, wear their own clothes and have a voice and body.” He thought there is assignment of specific attributes that vary by species and even by race, so that “Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired.”

That points to a psychological explanation, of which I am familiar with two:

The analytical psychology of Carl Jung posits a projection of archetypes of a collective unconscious as the cause of perceptions of the gods. Jung coined the terms anima (female soul) and animus (male spirit) for archetypes which when projected give rise to Ranginui the sky father, and Papatuanuku the earth mother. They are gendered Platonic ideas in the mind which are projected onto substantive forms in the world that are the object of reproduction. Nothing leaves the psyche, but our perceptions of the world are shaped by our sensitive and cognitive faculties, including the archetypes, so it is as if our mind is projected into the natural world.

Second, there are theories from the Cognitive Science of Religion. For example, cognitive psychology posits a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD, here), which attributes agency to moving things, including the celestial bodies of mythology. It is also posited that there is a Theory of Mind faculty (ToM, here), in which the subject conceives particular thoughts in perceived agents, such as Ranginui and Papatuanuku, or Uranus and Gaia.

These theories of projection and cognition are not necessarily mutually exclusive and nor are they necessarily conclusive. But irrespective of how you particularly explain it, I’m quite sure that the gods are all in the mind and certainly not substantive forms in the world. Note that archetypes are distinct Platonic forms in the mind which distinguish particular gods, whereas for cognitive psychology there are general beliefs in gods. I suspect that both of these sorts of theories apply to a belief of a pantheon of gods and such belief is due to both nature and nurture.

Ranginui and Papatuanuku (here) have significant similarities with the Greek gods Uranus (also god of the Sky) and Gaia (Earth mother): Both couples emerged out of the void (Chaos / Te Kore, p. 92) and signify the union of Sky Father and Earth Mother. They are separated by their sons Cronus and Tane (p. 93); the act of separating sky and earth determines the beginning of light, space, and life (p. 124); and the ensuing Greek genealogy and Maori whakapapa demonstrate generation, interconnectedness and knowledge.

These similarities indicate a common influence due to either the projection of innate ideas (e.g., archetypes of a collective unconscious) or a sharing of ideas between cultures, or a combination of these things.

Choice of Maori Knowledge

As mentioned, Mead says that Maoris have a second creation story of Io:

“The other creation story features a supreme being and a supreme creator, which has become part of matauranga Maori and our cultural knowledge system. There remains the suspicion, however, that the idea of a supreme deity was the result of Christian missionaries coming to Aotearoa. The Ngati Kahungunu tohunga Te Matorohanga and Pohuhu were quite clear about the position and role of Io: they saw him as being of higher status than the sons of Ranginui and Papatuanuku. In Volume 1 of The Maori by Best, he provides a lot of information about Io as a supreme being.” (p. 95)

“It is also said that Io (Best, 1941, Vol I: 89):

‘… created the earth and the heavens, and caused all realms, all things to exist, hence he is known as Io the Parent’.”

“Best wrote that Io was:

‘… the cause of the birth of offspring to the primal parents, Rangi and Papa’.” (p. 89)

Mead says, “The two versions of our creation stories meet at the point that Ranginui and Papatuanuku have their offspring,” after which both versions continue with the whakapapa of the gods. (p. 97) Up to that point, the Io version is similar to the story of Creation and of Adam and Eve in Genesis.

According to Best (in Holman, p. 147), Tutakangahau told him that, “Io was the primal god, the original god who existed in the very beginning of things, before the sky and earth were produced, though it was not stated that Io formed these. It was Io who caused all other gods to be, but he himself preceded them.”

Mead thinks that the Io concept was introduced by missionaries, “There is evidence about new matauranga being shared such as the idea of a supreme god called Io-te-matua-kore, Io the fatherless, who was introduced into te ao Maori. The original belief system for Maori was based on Ranginui and Papatuanuku; so somewhere along the line Io was introduced into the belief system and integrated into some karakia that tohunga use today.” (p. 343)

But Holman writes, “Best claims Tutakangahau said of Io: ‘That is a very old doctrine. He was a god of very ancient times. He caused all the [other] gods to appear. He was the beginning of the gods’.” (p. 147) “If Io was an indigenous deity, there is no denying the opportunity to re-imagine him in Christian terms.” (p. 144) Best records Tutakangahau conflating Io and Genesis 1:1-10, “In the beginning were Rangi and Papa, or Heaven and Earth; but heaven lay prone upon the earth and there was no light, darkness brooded between them.” (p. 174)

Mead says that “Best also wrote of how Io had twelve aspects to his name …” These include that Io is the eternal, unchanging, permanent deity; the origin of all things, all life and all knowledge; unknowable, cannot be seen and is above all. (p. 96)

If so, then Io is similar to the God of the Judeo-Christian religion.

Io ‘the fatherless’ is naming the same idea as the uncaused cause of Aristotle, the unknowable God of Thomas Aquinas, and the Theory of Everything of Steven Hawking. It is the reason why there is something rather than nothing: the principle of creation which people call God. Irrespective of where it came from, by adopting the concept of Io, Tutakangahau was putting his people on the path taken by European science, of seeking an ever-closer approximation to truth.

There was a Christian influence in the formulation of the Io concept but it is debateable whether the concept was present prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Mead doesn’t like that possibility, but he nevertheless concedes, “We have to accept the fact that Io is in our knowledge system.” (p. 97)

So, within their own knowledge system of matauranga Maori, the Maoris have a choice of regressing to a mythological belief that anthropomorphic gods created the cosmos, or progressing towards a scientific belief that there is a single principle which created and sustains the universe.

Whereas Best regresses Maori knowledge, Tutakangahau was trying to progress it. Holman says that, “Whakapapa became the new currency, both for Pākehā like Best to establish historical origins and migration dating, and for leaders like Tutakangahau to make links with a biblical universe and a European chronology.” (p. 125) “Tutakangahau was trying to align the genealogies of Rangi and Papa with a biblical world view. Best was moving Māori being back into the past …”. (p. 127)

So also is Hirini Mead.

I doubt that Professor Mead holds a belief that there are gods because it is not plausible, yet he writes as if he does. I suspect that he does so because it offers an alternative for some part-Maoris and their non-Maori supporters to what they claim is an oppressive colonial Christian nation. It seems to me that Mead is participating to bring about a faction in New Zealand coalescing in a sect of te ao Maori mythicism. Presumably that is intended to bring about or contribute to Maori separatism in New Zealand.

Mead writes, “Te ao Maori is a vibrant and changing concept as we ourselves are changing as we decolonise and reshape our world.” (p. 136) Yet recall that when trying to establish the plausibility of matauranga Maori he said, “I propose that there was and is only one te ao Maori. There is not an old one and a new one.” For that to be so, it cannot change. Mead changes his claims depending on which point he wants to make.

The Rational Faculty

What is conspicuous by its absence in matauranga Maori, including the Io version, is the Logos of John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Heraclitus (6th century BC) introduced Logos as the rational principle of transcendent wisdom which governs the cosmos and was the first Greek writer to consider rational discourse and how it may be true. Subsequently, Plato and Aristotle (4th century BC), after Heraclitus, considered reason (logos) to be necessary to understand truth and ethics. The Stoics (from Zeno about 300 BC to AD 260) understood Logos as the divine rationality pervading and ordering the universe, like Plato’s cosmic soul of substantive forms. Philo of Alexandria (20 BC - AD 50), after Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, was a Jewish mediator between Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity. He described Logos as the creative power which orders the world and the agent through which men know God, and claimed there is Greek philosophy in the Old Testament, such as Logos at Genesis 1:3. The Gospel of John 1:14 says the Logos (after Philo) was “made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”. That is, the idea of Jesus Christ introduced Greek rationalism to the Christian religion. (Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1957; Oxford Classical Dictionary 2nd edition, 1970.)

That progression demonstrates the evolutionary development of logical reasoning in Western thought. In the Christian myth, the Logos is the rational wisdom of God which is embodied in Jesus Christ who God has sent to inform us of His wisdom. This has come down to us through the Christian tradition of philosophy and science; most notably, in Augustine (5th century), Aquinas (13th century) and Newton (18th century).

In his 2021 book Rationality: What it is; Why it seems scarce; Why it matters, p. xv, Steven Pinker writes that the intellectual tools of sound reasoning include logic, critical thinking, probability, correlation and causation, and decision making under uncertainty. In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper considers the criterion of falsifiability and the role of induction in the acquisition of scientific knowledge.

That rational principle is missing in matauranga Maori which does not cover the core concepts mentioned by Pinker and Popper; so matauranga Maori cannot qualify as Western science.

Mead agrees and says that Western science and matauranga Maori are different approaches to knowledge (p. 214-5): “[Matauranga] is based on imaginative thinking, or, some would say, on innovative thinking. Others would say it is based on revelations from the atua.” (p. 140)

He says, “the plan is for the Maori knowledge system and the Western knowledge system to exist side by side in a relationship of partners as envisioned in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” (p. 25) However, “Matauranga Maori is a taonga atanga” (p. 215) which “is yet to be recognised by the state as the founding knowledge system of this nation.” (p. 219)

Conclusion

The West has developed to the point where biblical myths are understood as literary devices and modern cosmology is pursuing a scientific Theory of Everything. However, Hirini Mead wants the Maoris to regress into mythology and yet be on a par with science. In so doing he ignores the European developments in philosophy and science from the Presocratics to the arrival of the British which put European science categorically ahead of traditional Maori knowledge.

Mead claims to be recovering the one and only matauranga Maori but, whether the Maoris do so from creative contemplation or divine disclosure, they are constructing it and selecting European sources, such as Elsdon Best, to support their desired position.

Matauranga Maori as religion is a conceit by a faction of native votaries, indignant at having been overwhelmed by a more advanced European culture, and who have failed to catch up. They are using matauranga as a pretext to further Maori separatism and decolonization in order to displace democracy and regress to Maori tribalism.

It is disappointing that our authorities have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.

References

Hirini Moko Mead, Matauranga Maori, 2025.

“Best of both worlds: Elsdon Best and the metamorphosis of Maori spirituality.” Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, University of Canterbury, 2007.

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstreams/49afbd00-8aaf-4355-9101-0b109d01757d/download

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/items/1686c9b6-fe6d-48d9-9625-c53ff67e2225

Robert Graves, Greek Myths, 1958