Remember last year when we blew the whistle on the $4 million of taxpayer money being spent on recording, remixing, and playing whale music to kauri trees to (apparently) ‘soothe and cure’ kauri dieback? …
The purpose of this project is to observe and record the deep cultural and spiritual significance that cultural practices connected with the natural world hold for tāngata Māori. Specifically, the project involves recording the revitalisation of the Māra Tautāne in a hapū of Tūhoe, located in Ruātoki, in the northern Te Urewera. […]
The project also elevates the importance of the role of wāhine [woman] in the preservation and maintenance of cultural practices associated with māra [the garden]. […]
The Māra Tautāne acts as a symbolic icon to enable a connection between the spiritual world and the physical world. It is a symbol of Māori connectedness and inseparability from the natural world.
This project got $156k. This is science funding, not social studies or anthropology funding.
The outcomes we paid for were a story book, a 20 minute video and the below kumara
patch.
Amazing.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
Amazing.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
7 comments:
What is the research question that might have an answer that nobody could guess? What is the breakdown of spending, for each dollar of the $156k?
Wait til David hears about the $22 billion on a road. $22 billion! 4 fully funded CRLs!
And of course there's no way the 'researchers' will use any 'colonial' technologies such as fertilisers and pesticides, right? That wouldn't be 'cultural', right?
The research proposal is, as commonly termed these days, a 'word salad' with a dressing of over-blown phrases and pretentious, mostly meaningless verbiage. Maybe the sweet potatoes arising from the study could be par-boiled and incorporated in a salad, or is their destiny kumara chips, sprinkled with parmesan cheese?
A further thought: KFC, Kumaras fight colonialism.
Any acknowledgement of the fact that pre European kumara were the size of your thumb ?
It was European sailors who brought the decent sized kumara over from South America.
Any acknowledgement of the indisputable fact that the Maori version of kumara was discarded and lost here in NZ ?
A Japanese University researcher had sourced the original version and had it in cultivation.
In the 1970s, a party of Maori kamatua flew First Class to Japan, on the taxpayers dollar, were given a box of the genuine kumara, which itself was given a First Class return seat .
It was a scandal at the time - the sort of thing that today would make headlines of praise in the MSM today.
And where exactly are those Japanese cultivars now ???
The $22b road with a below the line business case could buy 141,000 of these. When is David putting out the other 140,999 blog posts about wasteful spending?
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