The government of New Zealand continues to throw away money by funding ludicrous projects involved indigenous “ways of knowing” (in this case Mātauranga Māori, or “MM”).
One government initiative, while admitting that MM differs in some ways from modern science, not only maintains that MM remains a “knowledge base”, but insists that the practice must remain under Māori control. Science, however, is not under the control of any ethnic group, so this is an attempt to not only sacralize indigenous knowledge, but to prevent others from investigating its claims:
Mātauranga Māori is a knowledge base in its own right. It is Māori knowledge, including values and culture. It is different from modern science. Mātauranga Māori belongs to iwi and should remain under Māori control. Mātauranga Maori is taonga (a treasure) and as such should be protected.
Here’s an example of money thrown down the drain to the end given above. It was, as always, sent to me by a NZ scientist who wishes to remain anonymous, for even sending me stuff like this could endanger someone’s job. Click on the site to see one of the projects underwritten by Kiwi taxpayers:
One of the projects involves trying to stem the death of kauri trees (Agathis australis), the iconic tree of New Zealand. Kauri deforestation, due to logging by Europeans and also burning buy Māori, is now exacerbated by “Kauri dieback,” the death of trees after infection by a funguslike organism. This has resulted in the closure of forests (the infection may be spread by humans carrying soil on their feet), but so far nothing has really been effective in curing the disease or stopping its spread.
But a new government-funded project based on Māori traditions involves trying to stop the disease by, yes, playing whale songs to the trees and dousing them with whale oil. Here’s an excerpt from the project description at the link above (bolding is mine):
“Led by the Pawarenga community, Dr. Valance Smith and his team collaborated with kaitiaki and leaders from Pawarenga to delve into the realm of ‘ihirangaranga’—vibrations and frequencies—as healing sounds, to construct a sonic tapestry of rejuvenation and well-being.
Nestled amidst the Te Auwarawara forest, the soundscape is a layered composition, intricately woven with sonic samples of healthy kauri within its untouched habitat, the whale song of its cetacean kin the tohora, inlayed with the healing sounds of taonga puoro, takutaku, and karakia, representing profound layers of ancient wisdom and knowledge, deeply ingrained in the very fabric of the soundscape.”
In addition, the soundscape of ailing kauri trees has been captured and examined to gather vital baseline data, enabling continuous monitoring and tracking of their healing progress.
This project was supported by an array of mātauranga Māori tools, including pūrākau (oral narratives), maramataka (lunar calendar), and ngā kaupeka (phases of summer and winter) unique to the Pawarenga region. These invaluable resources serve as both treatment modalities and management tools, empowering the community to foster the well-being and vitality of their kauri.
Do I need to add anything to that save to say that there is no underlying “wisdom” or scientific data suggesting that sounds played to ailing trees could cure them, much less the sounds of whale songs. And yes, the project was funded by the National Science Challenges, a government initiative.
Here’s a video of the project with these YouTube notes:
Oranga is a suite of kaupapa Māori projects that aim to restore the collective health of trees, forests and people. The team will do this by connecting to, and resourcing, Māori communities and their environmental knowledge holders to explore solutions embedded in mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge).
Click ‘play’ to view what they’ve been up to in the first three years of the programme.
This programme is funded by Ngā Rākau Taketake, which is administered by New Zealand’s Biological Heritage National Science Challenge | Ngā Koiora Tuku Iho.
Note that the video begins with the statement that there are “forms of knowledge” other than science, and that indigenous knowledge gets no respect because the “colonization process” has “tried to remove our knowledge” and outlawed it. In my view, this is pure, ludicrous science-dissing.
The whale nonsense begins at about 2:50 with the claim that “the whale once traversed the face of the earth” (yes, on land, too!) and that there is a “sibling relationship” between whales and kauri trees.
This is what happens when “traditional wisdom” is used instead of modern science (which, by the way, discovered the organism causing the tree infection).
Well, who knows—the tattooed Måori man might be right: whale oil and whale bone might cure the trees, as he claimed it has. But I’m not betting on it. How about a double-blind control test rather than legends and anecdotes?
Several whale species near Austrailia are endangered. I hope they are aware of which types of whales they are sacrificing for their oil. Of course I think no whales ought to die for superstitious “treatments” for fungus.
Maybe some iwi will try to save those endangered whales by capturing them and rubbing them with kauri bark. One might say that’s a mechanism with no data or theory to support it. But it’s no less likely to be true than the idea that the soundscape of kauri forests can be used to cure their fungal infections.
Whaling ended off New Zealand in 1965 and since 1978 it has been illegal to kill a cetacean in New Zealand’s economic zone within 200 miles of its coasts. There is vigorous public and official government sentiment against whaling elsewhere in the world. As Michael Sisley says below, whales often beach in New Zealand and this may be where Maori obtain blubber for rendering into oil for their magic.
I think we can be confident that whales aren’t being killed in a futile effort to save trees.
New Zealand has jumped the whale.
+ 1
“The whale nonsense begins at about 2:50 with the claim that “the whale once traversed the face of the earth” (yes, on land, too!)…”
Broadly speaking, this is correct, but I suspect they didn’t mean cetacean evolution from terrestrial ancestors.
Whale Oil Beef Oct(ober)!
I’m pretty sure they mean “modern whales” not “the ancestors of modern whales”!
So funnily enough, the “data” repository (https://data.bioheritage.nz/dataset/theme_1_oranga) has as it’s first item a storybook. No, seriously the first document is a story book on the legend they are basing the “tTreatment” off. And in that storybook the whales are first depicted as their land walking ancestors and slowly becomes the modern whale as the two brothers (the whale and the tree) drift apart. So at least they got that small detail correct. However, and data of the efficiecey of this whale oil and noises on combatting the fungus is absent. There is mearly a report on how participants felt included in the process which is ok…but maybe ensure the project they are working on is actually effective?
It’s indicative of how bad things are here that I saw this a while back (it’s from 2022) and didn’t think it sufficiently unusual to consider passing on to our host. The largely non-existent “research outputs” of the completed research are here:
https://bioheritage.nz/research/oranga-wellbeing/
My favourite was “Te Reo o te waonui a Tāne (the language of the domain of Tāne)”, with its suggestion that the “untouched habitat” of the kauri includes “the whale song of its cetacean kin the tohora”. Needless to say the leader of the project, Dr Valance Smith, appears to have no scientific qualifications whatsoever – his PhD thesis is entitled “Ka tangi te tītī, ka tangi te kākā, ka tangi hoki ahau: The Creative Potential of Contemporary Māori Music in Promoting Te Reo Māori”
I like the reference to the array of matauranga Maori “tools”. Even the language makes no sense. How are these “tools” to be used in the project? Would these same tools or different ones be used to examine any other question? Is it even meaningful to imagine a question that could or would not be addressed by these tools, showing the inadequacy of the current tool set? Or is the space of addressable questions by definition limited to those deemed amenable to attack by the tools endowed by the Creator at the beginning of time?
Oh FFS. This stuff makes me equally enraged (mainly at the money – I’m glad I’m not a taxpayer there) and depressed that such utter, religious nonsense can be taken seriously in a first world country.
Notice the full face “moko” tattoo. Gotta commit to the bit, right? Makes one an expert in science in NZ apparently.
What a fraud, what a mess, what a national scale embarrassment. I lived in NZ as a kid – it wasn’t an insane country then.
D.A.
NYC
It’s starting to make inroads elsewhere. Search for “Indigenous ways of knowing” + a location.
It’s in Canada too:
https://www.queensu.ca/indigenous/ways-knowing/about
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/research-monitoring-reporting/reporting/indigenous-ways-of-knowing
iwork have all rights to any whale washed up on any NZ beach. Nobody else can touch it or take from it. Maybe they get the oil from there. Embarrassment nonetheless
I’m not sure what “iwork” is, but if Māori have all the rights to such whales, does that means that scientists are forbidden from studying the bodies? If so, that’s reprehensible. Who gave this group the right to all washed-up whales, and what is the rationale?
I suspect they meant to say iwi (tribe or sub-tribe). It’s true and I agree it’s reprehensible.
Sadly, people have different rights according to their whakapapa (ancestry). Not just regarding beached whales, this newfound racism is everywhere, in education, health, the justice system, science.
I found this yesterday, and thought of these articles:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/maori-data-lens/maori-lens.html
Did the whale oil do anything, other than smell bad?
To be fair we have a high rate of them beaching here. Guess who has first dibs?
Surely the beaching whales are just trying to get to their kin, those trees, to share an outpouring of takutaku with them.
I have to thank our host and his anonymous Kiwi informant for this latest bulletin from the hunting ground Dr. Valance Smith & Co. It is fabulous. No wonder Andrew Doyle had to give up parody.
I put it to a mix of there being many around here, the currents and bad luck.
His PHD thesis is basically on modern music and its role in expanding the use and fluency in Te Reo, a very legit subject but not one about botany but linguistics and music/art.
I see. Prayer works because of the vibrations and frequencies prayers generate when uttered.
That might also warrant a double-blind control.
Data plus “continuous monitoring and tracking?” That almost sounds science-y — till you realize they’re talking about an incomprehensible mishmash of “soundscape” evaluated using a methodology kept strictly under Māori control.
Perhaps they try to track the healing process of the soundscape using interpretive dance. That would at least be entertaining.
I wanted to ask them what the results were so I could include this startling MM science in my NZ classroom. Looks like there’s no contact details and no findings reported: yet this video was posted two years ago after three years of work. Um, didn’t work then? Indulging toddlers never does.
I was thinking the exact same thing and also had to search around but eventually found this “report”: https://data.bioheritage.nz/dataset/theme_1_oranga/resource/cb84b68e-b6ce-49fe-8c3e-36f33c8b1a83
I haven’t had a thorough read of it yet but upon first glance there doesn’t seem to be any concrete data in there about methodologies and results, only vague assertions of improved relationships between various Maori groups and also “cultural and attitude changes”.
Is there anything similar in Australia?
Not that I know of; I haven’t heard, for example, of indigenous “ways of knowing” being taught as science in Australia. New Zealand seems almost unique among countries of the world in this form of sacralizing formerly oppressed groups.
Thank you for this article. The problem with Matauranga Maori is not just in the pre-scientific mystical alleged ‘ways of knowing’ as it applies to kauri trees. The State monopoly accident insurance scheme ACC now pays for Raonga Maori treatments for all kinds of injuries as if these practitioners were at least an equivalent to other health care practitioners. Medical doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, chiropractors, acupunturists, osteopaths all must be registered under the same Act of Parliament – the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2003/0048/latest/DLM203312.html . Raonga Maori practitioners will receive $5m in the coming year. They have no qualifications in their art. To my knowledge, there is no science ever carried that tests their version of health care against any standard. No RCTs, diagnostic accuracy or reliability studies. Nothing. Every one else pays a considerable sum to be registered as a health care practitioner except these local purveyors of prayer, massage & a few herbs. New Zealand has fallen far in the last 10 years.
It seems to me that all of these types of initiatives in which the government is paying the Maori for goofball stuff is a form of reparations for the colonialism inflicted on the country. I can’t believe that most people in the government who provide funding for such projects actually think that is not a bunch of hooey, but their internalized sense of guilt along with in-group social pressure leads to them providing money for performative acts by these Maori groups. Of course, to do so they must also think the Maori are mentally incapable of doing real, modern science, so the bottom line of this is that the government considers Maori to be mentally inferior to their white colonizers, and thus those colonizers have a moral obligation to take care of those poor savages (this is not spoken but it is at the root of the support, IMO).
I expect any bureaucrat who challenged this nonsense would face accusations of racism.
Perhaps they’re getting their whale oil from RFK Jr.
https://youtu.be/ZFO284VkmL0
This would be more persuasive if there weren’t so many meshuga non-Māori claiming to have ‘scientific’ backing for their silly ideas these days 🙂
Sorry, but what you’re saying is nonsense. I was a scientist my whole career. How did what I say become less “persuasive” because some non-scientists make dumb claims?
I emphasize again: my piece is the product of a trained scientist.
You just have to laugh don’t you. But in all seriousness whales DID roam the land. You see they had these retractable legs like the wheels of an airliner. And when they hit they beach the whales would wind the legs down so they could walk to the forest.
Prove I’m wrong!