New Zealanders are repeatedly told that Māori spiritual beliefs, practices and traditions must be respected.
But when religion and superstition are presented as “knowledge”, and criticism of spiritual claims is treated as disrespect, constant demands for respect can eventually produce the opposite.
People are entitled to believe in gods, spirits, tapu, wairua and ancestral presence. Other people are equally entitled not to believe in any of it — and not to have it constantly inserted into their working day, school day, meetings, assemblies and public institutions.
At times the room feels very crowded with dead ancestors.
Who exactly are we addressing?
The murdered or the murderers?
The people who ate human flesh or the people who were eaten?
The peaceful ancestors or the violent ones?
The benevolent spirits or the malevolent ones?
When spiritual language becomes constant and effectively compulsory, reverence can turn into scepticism and ridicule.
The recent story about the waka being excavated on Rēkohu is a good example.
“ANCIENT”, THEY SAID
More than 800 pieces of a double-hulled waka have reportedly been recovered near Rangihoua Stream on Rēkohu.
The material has been dated to around the mid-1400s — roughly 570 years ago.
It is historically and archaeologically interesting, but “ancient” is an inflated description.
My own family’s local church in England is about 400 years older than this pile of decaying timber. Many ordinary English churches approaching a thousand years old remain standing and in regular use.
Human society did not begin in 1200 AD.
A fifteenth-century canoe can be significant without pretending it belongs to deep antiquity.
“SACRED”, THEY SAID
Then comes the spiritual layer.
Te Ao Māori News quotes Moriori descendant Maui Solomon saying tradition recorded the waka as carrying “the etchu or the gods” and that it was therefore “very tapu”.
That is a religious claim, not an archaeological finding.
The timbers are evidence. Their age is evidence. Construction methods can be examined and the form of the vessel reconstructed from physical material.
But the proposition that gods travelled in it belongs to belief.
Which gods? What were their names? What exactly were they supposedly doing aboard the boat?
There is nothing wrong with reporting that tradition says gods travelled in the waka. The problem starts when spiritual tradition and archaeological evidence are allowed to merge into one narrative.
AND NOW TAXPAYERS ARE BEING ASKED FOR $3.5 MILLION
Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris has called on the Government to provide $3.5 million for recovery and preservation of the waka.
That makes scrutiny entirely legitimate.
If taxpayers are being asked to contribute millions of dollars, they are entitled to distinguish between what is physically significant, what is historically established, what is reconstructed tradition and what is religion.
THE GALILEE BOAT
The contrast with the Galilee Boat is useful.
The wooden boat preserved beside the Sea of Galilee dates from roughly 100 BC to AD 100 — around 2,000 years ago.[5]
The Galilee Boat — actual preserved boat at the Yigal Allon Centre, Israel
It comes from the place and period associated with Jesus and is commonly nicknamed the “Jesus Boat”, yet no responsible archaeologist needs to claim that Jesus actually travelled in that particular vessel.
There is no evidence that he did.
Its importance rests on what the surviving boat can actually tell us about first-century life and boatbuilding.
The site is in Israel, a Jewish state, and naturally benefits from Christian tourism. But its archaeological importance does not depend upon turning a religious association into an archaeological fact.
THE VASA
The Vasa makes a different point.
The magnificent Swedish warship sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised more than three centuries later.[6]
The Vasa — actual preserved ship at the Vasa Museum, Stockholm
The Vasa is younger than the Chatham Islands waka, yet technologically there is simply no comparison.
It was multi-decked, heavily armed, fully rigged, elaborately carved and constructed on a scale requiring far greater engineering, organisation and specialised craftsmanship.
Its spectacular failure is itself a lesson in engineering and bad decision-making: grandeur and decoration did not make an unstable ship seaworthy.
The Rangihoua waka may be archaeologically important, but it remains a comparatively simple fifteenth-century double-hulled canoe.
Calling it tapu or saying gods travelled in it does not make its technology more sophisticated.
You cannot make primitive technology remarkable by saying a god went for a ride in it.
WHEN “CULTURE” BECOMES CIVIC RELIGION
None of this would matter greatly if Māori spirituality remained a matter of private belief.
It does not.
Karakia, atua, wairua, tapu and tūpuna now appear throughout public institutions, government ceremonies and schools.
The issue is not whether people are allowed to believe in them. Of course they are. The issue is why everybody else should repeatedly be expected to listen to, participate in or defer to somebody else’s supernatural worldview in publicly funded settings.
People deserve respect. Ideas do not automatically deserve respect.
Religious claims can be criticised. Supernatural beliefs can be mocked. Historical claims can be challenged. Public expenditure can be questioned.
That is ordinary intellectual freedom.
AND TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING FOR IT — AGAIN
Coincidentally, $3.5 million appears again.
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union estimated on 18 August that paid waiata and karakia practice across nine public-service agencies could be costing taxpayers approximately $3.5 million a year.[7][8]
ACT has proposed restricting public-service agencies from initiating or funding cultural and spiritual practices unless genuinely required for the job.[9]
The same problem arises in schools.
Christian religious instruction is recognised as religion and subjected to statutory safeguards. Yet Māori spiritual material involving atua, ancestral presence and other supernatural concepts can instead be classified as tikanga or culture.
Why should one supernatural worldview escape the religious label merely because it is Indigenous?
WHEN RELIGION IS CALLED “KNOWLEDGE”
This is where “MĀTAURANGA MĀORI” becomes contentious.
Calling something knowledge does not establish that it is knowledge.
Some material placed under that label may be practical, observational or empirical. Other material concerns gods, spirits, tapu, mauri, wairua and ancestral presence.
They do not have the same evidential status.
The Galilee Boat can be studied without claiming Jesus sailed in it. The Vasa can be studied without adding gods to its history.
Why should the standard change in New Zealand?
One moment we are discussing archaeology; the next, gods travelled in a canoe. One moment we are discussing astronomy; the next, we are discussing star gods.
If we want people to trust science and scholarship, we need to stop blurring the boundary between evidence and belief.
PROFESSOR JASON ARDAY
The recent controversy surrounding Cambridge Professor Jason Arday
should make New Zealanders cautious about feeling too smug about failures of
academic scrutiny overseas. His career came under intense examination in 2026
over questions about his academic record and allegations of plagiarism, which
he denied; Cambridge announced investigations into his qualifications, career
and appointment, and Arday resigned in August. [10][11][12][13]
PROFESSOR RANGI MĀTĀMUA
New Zealand should apply the same scepticism at home. Professor Rangi Mātāmua, based at the University of Waikato, has become one of the country’s most influential authorities on Matariki and Māori astronomy. Much of his work draws on a roughly 400-page family manuscript reportedly compiled between 1898 and 1933, yet that manuscript has never been published in full for ordinary independent scrutiny. Nevertheless, the Matariki narrative has been embraced by government, schools and public institutions, helped shape a new national public holiday, and left much of the country entranced by the modern myths — the fairy tale — before the underlying evidence has been fully exposed to public scrutiny. Similar evidential questions arise around claims of Māori connections with Antarctica explored in Ranginui: Call of the Ice and challenged in Yvonne van Dongen’s “Frozen Myths”. See “Show Us the Manuscript” and the supporting sources below. [14][15][16][17][18][19][22][23]
MĀTAURANGA MĀORI — OR INDIGENOUS STUDIES?
Another example stayed with me after the Diocesan School for Girls Open Day in March 2026.
I was shown around by a Year 10 student who told me students studied Mātauranga Māori in Years 7, 8, 9 and 10. She was clearly relieved that Year 10 was her last year of it.
When I asked what they actually studied, she told me they studied Indigenous cultures from around the world.
My immediate reaction was: then call it Indigenous Studies.
She also told me the Treaty of Waitangi was studied repeatedly through both Mātauranga Māori and Social Studies.
There is nothing wrong with studying the Treaty or Indigenous cultures. But labels and proportions matter.
Māori knowledge is Māori knowledge. Pacific knowledge is Pacific knowledge. Aboriginal Australian knowledge is Aboriginal Australian knowledge. Native American traditions belong to their respective peoples.
Putting everything Indigenous into one basket does not make it mātauranga Māori.[20][21]
THIS IS HOW RESPECT IS LOST
Back to the waka.
The physical remains exist. Their age can be tested. Their construction can be studied. Their archaeological importance can be debated.
Whether gods travelled aboard it is a religious proposition.
That distinction should not be difficult.
Tell the stories. Preserve the traditions. Study the archaeology. Teach the history. Believe in the spirits if you wish.
But do not insist that everybody else participate in those beliefs, hear about them constantly in publicly funded institutions, or treat them as established knowledge.
Constantly demanding reverence does not necessarily produce respect.
Sometimes it produces the opposite.
Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
GLOSSARY
Atua — Māori: gods, deities or supernatural beings.
Etchu — Moriori: gods or deities; broadly corresponding to Māori atua.
Tūpuna / tīpuna — Māori: ancestors.
Karāpuna — Moriori: ancestors.
Wairua — Māori: spirit or spiritual dimension.
Tapu — sacred, restricted or spiritually significant.
Karakia — ritual words, invocations or prayers; content and purpose vary.
Mauri — life force, vitality or spiritual essence.
Mātauranga Māori — Māori knowledge; a broad term covering Māori knowledge, practices and ways of knowing.
Waka — canoe or boat.
Rēkohu — the Moriori name for the Chatham Islands.
Rangihoua Stream — the place on northern Rēkohu near which the excavated waka was found.
1. Te Ao Māori News — Moriori seek urgent support to
recover tapu Rangihoua waka
https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2026/08/19/moriori-seek-urgent-support-to-recover-tapu-rangihoua-waka/
2. Te Ao Māori News — Ocean waka ‘most important
discovery in New Zealand archaeology’
https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/03/03/ocean-waka-most-important-discovery-in-new-zealand-archaeology/
3. Moriori — Rangihoua waka project/background
https://www.moriori.co.nz/our-mahi/the-rangihoua-a-moriori-waka-miheke
4. Te Pāti Māori / media coverage — Tākuta Ferris call
for $3.5 million recovery funding
https://pacific.scoop.co.nz/2026/08/ferris-government-must-fund-recovery-of-550-year-old-rangihoua-waka/
5. Yigal Allon Centre — The Galilee Boat
https://en.yigal-allon-centre.org.il/the-ancient-boat/
6. Vasa Museum — official history
https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
7. New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union — MBIE workplace
waiata investigation
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/exposed_mbie_s_daily_workplace_waiata_sessions
8. New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union — estimated
public-service waiata/karakia costs, 18 August 2026
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/revealed_act_s_banning_of_public_service_waiata_to_save_an_estimated_3_5_million_per_year
9. ACT Party — ACT will restore one public service for
all New Zealanders
https://www.act.org.nz/news/act-will-restore-one-public-service-for-all-new-zealanders
10. Reuters — Jason Arday, ex-Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism scandalhttps://www.reuters.com/world/uk/ex-cambridge-professor-centre-plagiarism-scandal-found-dead-british-media-report-2026-08-14/
11. The Guardian — Cambridge professor Jason Arday resigns amid accusations of plagiarism https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/aug/05/cambridge-professor-jason-arday-resigns-amid-accusations-of-plagiarism
12. The Guardian — The rise and fall of Jason Arday: a full
rundown of the questions being asked
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/06/rise-and-fall-of-jason-arday
13. The Guardian — Cambridge agrees to hold independent inquiry
into Jason Arday appointment
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/aug/12/cambridge-independent-inquiry-jason-arday-appointment
14. Royal Society Te Apārangi — Professor Rangi Mātāmua, 2020
Callaghan Medal
https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/medals-and-awards/research-honours/2020-research-honours-aotearoa/2020-callaghan-medal/
15. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga — Carkeek Observatory
https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/9808/Carkeek%20Observatory
16. Daily Telegraph New Zealand — Show Us the Manuscript
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/show-us-the-manuscript/
17. The Good Oil — Please, Show Us the Manuscript
https://goodoil.news/please-show-us-the-manuscript/
18. Breaking Views — Judy Gill: Show Us the Manuscript
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2026/07/judy-gill-show-us-manuscript.html
19. Waikanae Watch — Show Us the Manuscript
https://waikanaewatch.org/2026/07/17/show-us-the-manuscript/
22. Yvonne van Dongen — Frozen Myths: Antarctic documentary
revives debunked Māori voyages
https://theplatform.kiwi/opinions/frozen-myths
https://docedge.nz/events/ranginui-call-of-the-ice/
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