Bob Edlin: No, matauranga Māori has not been forgotten.....

No, matauranga Māori has not been forgotten as Govt focuses policy on advanced technology and redirects science funding

Shane Reti, in his last press statement as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, last week said the Government is backing a shift in science spending to areas that will have the greatest national impact.

A stronger focus will be placed on advanced technology.

The statement was triggered by the release of the Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council’s report on Priorities for Science Funding.

This identifies four priority areas for future government investment:

• Primary industries and the bioeconomy
• Technology for prosperity
• Environmental sustainability and resilience
• Healthy people and a thriving society

The council recommends boosting investment in advanced technologies by $122 million a year, but not with fresh funding.

The proposed $122 million a year increase for advanced technologies will be achieved through staged reallocation of existing science funding, over three years.

Approximately half of the $122 million has already been reprioritised towards advanced technology. Exact figures will be worked through as part of Budget processes.

The press statement makes no mention of matauranga Māori.

Mātauranga Māori has been described as the dynamic, indigenous knowledge system of Māori, encompassing traditional wisdom, skills, and philosophies passed down through generations. It covers all aspects of the spiritual and physical world, including cultural practices, often maintained by kaitiaki (guardians).

The Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council’s report provides this definition:

Mātauranga Māori. Māori knowledge, wisdom, and ways of knowing, which inform and complement science, innovation, and technology in New Zealand.

This knowledge system, while overlooked in Reti’s media statement, was mentioned in a speech he delivered on April 1, in which he expanded on the council’s report.

He addressed some concerns about science and research funding:

Will humanities and social sciences still be supported?

Yes. It is a whole pillar in itself; one of the four.

Is matauranga still supported?

Yes. The $42 million biodiversity platform is evidence of that.

The Report to the Prime Minister: Prioritisation in New Zealand’s Science, Innovation and Technology system is even more expansive.

Referring to the work of the Science System Advisory Group (SSAG), chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, it says the SSAG report highlighted the value of mātauranga Māori in driving research impact and recommended dedicated funding and mechanisms.

Our priorities are closely aligned with those identified by iwi and Māori organisations in recent engagements and analyses (see Appendix 3).

While the Council has not yet had the opportunity to give this aspect the depth of consideration it deserves, we wish to acknowledge its significance.

The Council recommends that the newly established RFNZ be tasked with determining appropriate funding mechanisms for Māori SI&T and mātauranga Māori, ensuring alignment with the S&T framework.

A few days after Reti said the Government would continue to fund matauranga Māori, American Professor Jerry Coyne posted an article headed

More touting of indigenous knowledge as coequal with modern science

He was reacting to an article in The Guardian about how science could be improved if only it incorporated indigenous “ways of knowing”—the “braiding of knowledge”.

This is headed Braiding knowledge: how Indigenous expertise and western science are converging.

Coyne comments:

I often see another metaphor used to express the same thing: “two-eyed seeing”, with one eye seeing the way indigenous people do, and the other way modern science does. (I won’t use the term “Western science,” often used to denigrate it.) The implication is that modern science is half blind without indigenous knowledge.

And once again we see five things. The first is that indigenous knowledge is local knowledge, usually about how to grow food or harvest other things that enhance the lives of locals.

Second, indigenous “ways of knowing” are not science in the modern sense—the sense that involves hypothesis testing, doubt, controlled experiments, blind testing statistics, data analysis, and mathematics. Indigenous “science” does not avail itself of these essential items in the toolkit of science. Rather, it usually involves using trial and error (mainly about food), and if something works, it becomes “knowledge”. Such knowledge—like how to build the “clam gardens” copiously mentioned in the article below—may be true and may indeed be “knowledge” conceived of as “justified true belief”, but justification usually doesn’t involve replication.

Third, the “braiding” is asymmetrical: modern science can contribute much more to indigenous practices than the other way around. How to build clam gardens or harvest sweetgrass is, after all, not something that’s widely applicable, while principles of genetics, quantum mechanics, chemistry, and so on, are universal, and science can do a lot to help indigenous people with issues like medicine, probably the most important area of asymmetry. We do not often adopt indigenous medical practices, but the other way around is pervasive, because modern medicine, based largely on science, works..

Fourth, examples of indigenous knowledge that are given in the article are few. These articles are usually a lot more about people touting “other ways of knowing”, and calling attention to the past oppression of indigenous people, than they are about the expansion of human knowledge.

Finally, the article completely neglects examples of the damage done to the environment by indigenous people, and these examples are not rare. They cannot be mentioned because what indigenous people do must be uniformly regarded as good. But they are not, as the date below the fold show.

Coyne contends it’s not false to say that a great deal of “traditional Native thought”, construed as “ways of knowing”, is indeed mythic, religious, or plain made-up.


But some of it is not, and insofar as this knowledge can be verified by modern science, that part is indeed “knowledge”.

He also says:

… given the toolkit that constitutes modern science and is used to establish “knowledge,” then yes, indigenous people should have to demonstrate that their knowledge really is knowledge in the modern sense before it’s used. When the Māori want to play whale songs to infected kauri trees because whales and kauri trees were once seen as brothers, then they should have to demonstrate the phylogenetic affinity of trees and cetaceans as well as the efficacy of whale songs. (This is a real case based on mystic lore.)

As to the contention that scientists must consult potential Indigenous partners before any research questions have been created, Coyne counters:

If they plan experiments on indigenous land, or experiments that affect indigenous people, then yes, there should be consultation. But “getting excited together” before any research questions have been formulated is not the way that science works, nor should it. Science is not an endeavour that involves research equity, and creating such equity must be an extracurricular activity. The job of science is to understand the Universe, not to create social justice or spread an ideology.

Let’s see how many of those ideas are incorporated in the Luxon Government’s science policy as priorities are changed and the funding redistributed.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.