A Kiwi sent me this just-posted “Shape of Dialogue” video, which, although quite long for me (2 hours!), has an explanation of mātauranga Māori (MM) by a part-Māori scholar and musician, Charles Royal. Royal’s webpage shows that he’s not only an expert in “indigenous knowledge”, but also “Advise[s] and Lead[s] Projects and People, particularly to do with the ‘creative potential’ of the indigenous Māori dimension of Aotearoa-New Zealand.”
My correspondent recommended this interview with Royal as “a very good resource for those seeking to understand mātauranga Māori. Charles is very smart, reasonable and balanced, and I’d encourage you to have a listen.” The correspondent adds, “You will see that they go back and forth on the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science, but there’s no doubt that Charles is pro-science.”
The podcast is also here if you want to download it.
I listened to the whole thing, and you’re welcome to do it, but unless you’re interested in a lot of NZ history, I’d concentrate on three segments. And if you’re interested in the relationship between MM—”indigenous science”—and modern science, just listen from 1:24:40 to the end (see below).
Here are three relevant bits.
25:25-about 35 minutes. Royal’s definition of MM. The term “mātauranga Māori” doesn’t seem to have been used in New Zealand before 1980, but it did exist as a “fragmented, incomplete, and disorganized” body of traditional knowledge held by the indigenous people, though parts of this “way of knowing” are more organized than others. Royal discusses where the repositories of this knowledge are to be found. As we’ve learned in earlier posts, Royal affirms that it’s largely “practical knowledge”: things like how to fish or harvest plants.
1:06:58-to about 1:15:00 Royal’s definition of “indigeneity”.
1:24:40 to the end of the podcast. The discussion turns to the relationship between MM and science—the fracas started with a letter to “The Listener” by seven professors at the University of Auckland. Royal does see MM as a “kind of science,” , and “intergenerational body of knowledge” (“efficacious knowledge”), but not equivalent to modern science. He adds that MM is not a mature science but a “way to live in the world”. but it might have become a mature science had it not been suppressed by colonization. I don’t agree with him, especially because he claims it’s not really the same as modern science, nor does it aspire to be.
Note: at 1:44:30: Royal discusses whether MM should be taught in science classes as coequal to modern science—per recent national curriculum guidelines. Royal can’t answer that question, and says that “there isn’t the research” to address it. But I think that we already know enough, based on the non-empirical nature of much of MM, its concentration on practicality rather than theory, and its addition of theology, morality, and legend, to say that while teaching MM is necessary and valuable in New Zealand to educate the citizens in the sociology, history, and anthropology of the country, it should not be taught in science class as the Maori alternative to modern science.
I’d recommend, then, that if you’re interested in the compatibility of MM and modern science as forms of science teachable in school, listen from 1:24:40 to the end of the podcast—about 42 minutes.
Here is a little jingle in support of Matauranga from the Ministry of Education, in New Zealand. Such songs are known as ‘Waiata’, an important feature of Matauranga. https://www.manaorite.ac.nz/
The podcast must be hot stuff – Google refused to download it as it’s not fit for under 18s.
There are now a number of podcasts in this series, including one featuring our host. Quite long, but Youtube can be persuaded to cough up a machine-generated transcript if you prefer, although it struggles with Maori words in particular – “martial armadi” is good. Charles Royal seems like a nice chap, but in many ways I’m none the wiser as to the actual content of MM. About the concept of “mauri”, he says things like:
“this concept called mauri which is to do with the animating energy of life. It’s to do with the self-generating energy of life. A garden is a garden that produces its produce is said to be replete with mauri,its animating energy. When a garden is exhausted and it’s no longer producing produce it’s assumed that it’s mauri has gone”
which is at best a pre-scientific view.
It also shades over into outright mumbo-jumbo: “it was also said traditionally that tohunga or priests were able to manipulate mauri. They were able to harness it and to place it into certain vessels and to enable those vessels to produce produce of various kinds”
He does at least say he doesn’t know if this stuff should be taught in science classes.
Phlogiston!
It is time to start campaigning for Old Moores Almanac to be taught as science in universities.
In Andrew Marr’s book “A history of the world”, he discusses the civilizations of South America. One of these, the Nazca people (who marked huge animals, designs and ‘alien runways’ on the ground) reached their peak in the early 500s CE before declining following catastrophic changes in the weather. This is what he has to say about the underpinning reasons for their demise:
“Yet the El Nino, the events of 535 [the “year without sunshine] and the long rains, destructive as they were, ought not to have destroyed the Nazca … Research by a Cambridge University team now suggests that the reason the Nazca failed was at least partly because they had cut down forests of huarango trees. These had not only provided shade, fuel and building materials but had also underpinned the flood plain with their huge root systems – the largest by far in the Americas. Fixing nitrogen and helping fertilize the soil, these trees have been described as the ‘ecological keystone species’ for the area. Once the trees had been cut down … these unusual lush valleys were left to the mercy of the floods the Pacific brought – floods so bad, they washed away not only villages and fields but many centuries of painstaking human cultural development.
The Nazca religion with its stuffed human heads, its pointy-skulled priests, its hummingbirds, monkeys and arrow-straight lines, had told its people nothing useful about their deadly mistake. They were martyrs to their limited understanding – a far cry from the comfortable notion that ‘indigenous people’ always understand nature best. They had the wrong information and made the wrong choices; instead of busying themselves with cutting off more heads, they should have been worrying about cutting down their trees.”
And to think simultaneous with the NZ gov’t’s embrace of MM as science it introduces legislation to “reduce unwieldy sentences, incomprehensible acronyms and other government mumbo jumbo.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jargon-plain-english-new-zealand-11663366882