The other day I put up a post about an indigenous “science initiative” in New Zealand with a wonky aim: to cure the country’s iconic kauri trees of a fungal blight by, yes, playing whale songs to sick trees and rubbing them with whale oil and pulverized whale bones. This endeavor, I asserted, had no empirical basis to justify its funding—by New Zealand taxpayers, of course.
Indeed, the project came from a Māori legend that whales once roamed the land and were BFFs with kauri trees, but then got separated. The project was based on the supposition that bringing tree and whale back together again could not only revive their erstwhile friendship but also save the sick trees. (I can guarantee you here that they’re not talking about evolution of the trees and whales from a common ancestor, nor about terrestrial ancestors of whales.)
A quote from the initiative:
Māori whakapapa [genealogy] describes how the kauri and tohorā (sperm whale) are brothers, but they were separated when the tohorā chose the ocean over the forest. In this research area we looked at how this connection could possibly help save the kauri from kauri dieback disease.
The team was led by Matua Tohe Ashby and investigated rongoā (traditional medicine) solutions for kauri dieback. This involved tohorā, karakia and mōteatea, and tied into the second Oranga research project: Te reo o te waonui a Tāne. The team also traind kauri communities in rongoā solutions to help save their rākau (trees).
Here’s the video linked to Ashby’s name:
I called this project “mishegass”, a transliteration of the Yiddish word for “silliness” or “craziness”, and also used the English “nonsense”. How could I not mock such an endeavor, for doesn’t basing a funded project on a ludicrous myth fully deserve mockery? That is, unless you are a taxpaying New Zealander, in which case it should make you mad.
But my criticism also irritated a Māori journalist, who wrote me an email yesterday:
Hello Jerry
I am a journalist in New Zealand for the Southern Cross News I have recently read your article on Mātauranga Māori and would like to ask you a few questions
Have you ever been to New Zealand ?
Have you experienced Mātauranga Māori or was your research online?
Are you aware of the Pre-Polynesian Civilisation conspiracy theory and have you commented on this topic?
Do you have a bias towards Western Science and dismiss indigenous science?
Was colonisation an overwhelmingly positive event for Māori ?
Do you believe non-Māori should control the destiny of Mātauranga Māori
Joe Trinder | Editor
I hadn’t heard of the Southern Cross News (SCN), but it appears to be.a Māori-centric New Zealand website, and Joe Trinder is clearly of Māori ancestry, describing himself on “X” as “Woke Elite Maori of the highest order.”
As you can see, Trinder’s questions are loaded ones, and though I was tempted to respond, I saw no point, for there was already an article in the SCN, written by one Dr. Rawiri Waretini-Karena, criticizing my own critique and defending indigenous ways of knowing and the usefulness of whale songs, bones, and oil at curing kauri blight. Waretini-Karena himself is described at IGI Global as
. . . a current Post Doc Research Fellow Recipient lecturer and researcher at Te Whare Waananga o Awanuiaarangi Indigenous University in Whakatane. His qualifications include a PhD Indigenous Philosophy, 2014 Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, a Master of Arts Commercial Music 2010 WINTEC, and a Bachelor of Applied Social Science- Maaori Counselling 2004 WINTEC. He has spent the last 20 years in the education field.
He also has a TedX talk which he notes not only that he was a convicted murderer, but that (according to the caption), he
. . . . graduated in 2014 with a PhD Doctorate of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies and was the recipient of three prestigious doctoral scholarship awards for his research into transforming Māori experiences of historical intergenerational trauma.
Waretini-Karena doesn’t appear to have any formal scientific training. I won’t dismiss his critique because of that, but it does give us some understanding of his failure to understand modern science and how it differs from indigenous “ways of knowing”.
I got the link to Waretini-Karena’s article in SC from a Kiwi colleague, but the bizarre thing is that the article kept appearing and disappearing on the SC website for reasons unknown. (It wasn’t my browser, for the vanishing post also vanished in New Zealand.) The second time this happened, my colleague made a pdf of the article so it couldn’t be permanently removed. Below a screenshot of the article, and if it appears again I’ll put up a working link to the piece.
UPDATE: The link is working again! Well, blow me down, hearties: I have no idea why it keeps being active and inactive but you can see it here, but capture a copy if you want to save it.
I checked this morning and the link is still dead and the critique is gone. But I’ve put the entire article below from the pdf saved by a colleague.
Here’s the short article; the text is indented and my comments are flush left. There was no link to my original piece nor even my name given as the author. From Waretini-Karina
Introduction:
The recent article critiquing the “Whale Song” project, a government-funded initiative aimed at revitalizing kauri trees using Māori knowledge, exemplifies a persistent problem in Western engagement with Mātauranga Māori: a fundamental misunderstanding of its core principles and its historical context.
The article is titled:
The author’s dismissal of the project as “ludicrous” and “nonsense” is not only disrespectful but also indicative of a narrow, reductionist view of knowledge. This dismissal stems from a Western perspective that prioritizes empirical evidence and scientific methodology as the sole measures of validity, failing to acknowledge the inherent limitations of such approaches in understanding and appreciating the complexities of Māori knowledge.
Mātauranga Māori [MM] is not simply a collection of “legends and anecdotes,” as the author suggests. It is a dynamic, evolving system of knowledge, practices, and beliefs that have been developed and refined over generations through observation, experimentation, and deep connection to the natural world. It operates on a holistic and interconnected understanding of the universe, where all things are intrinsically linked and interdependent.
This is of course a distortion of what I’ve written. I’ve noted that there is some empirical trial-and-error knowledge in MM (but also a passel of legend, myth, religion, and instruction about how to live), though I’m not aware of any explicit experimentation, at least not how modern science conceives of an “experiment”. The defense continues:
The article’s assertion that “there is no underlying ‘wisdom’ or scientific data suggesting that sounds played to ailing trees could cure them” reveals a lack of understanding of the potential benefits of sound therapy, a field of study that has shown promising results in various areas, including plant growth and stress reduction.
Yes, sound waves have been shown to affect plant growth in some studies, but this conclusion is controversial (see here).
I don’t doubt that some stressed humans can be soothed by music, but the issue at hand is not that: it’s whether reuniting infected kauri trees with the oil, bones, and songs of their ancient buddies can cure the blight. Beyond the author’s anecdotal claim, I argue that it’s not worth spending the money investigating this theory, which, in the end, is based on a palpably false legend: that whales once roamed the earth (as whales, not their ancestors), became friends with kauri trees, and then they lost touch. This experiment is designed fix the legend by playing whale songs to the trees and dousing them with whale oil and whale bones. Experimenting based on an unsubstantiated legend, and using taxpayer money to do so, is not something that seems propitious. In contrast to the author’s claim, this research is indeed based on a legend, and one that we know to be false.
Furthermore, the article’s focus on “double-blind control tests” as the sole measure of validity ignores the inherent limitations of Western scientific methodology in understanding and appreciating the complexities of Māori knowledge. Mātauranga Māori operates on a different epistemology, one that values lived experience, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and the interconnectedness of all things.
Here the author is blowing smoke. How do you establish that a treatment of any sort works unless you compare the effects of the treatment with a group not given it, and blinding the experimenters as far as possible (i.e., those who measure the effects wouldn’t know if the trees had had whale songs played to them or whether they were doused with whale oil and bones).
The “different epistemology” of MM appears to be based not on rigorous experimentation, but on wish-thinking. Don’t forget, too, that modern science is also based on “intergenerational knowledge transmission”. As for the “interconnectedness of all things,” I don’t see how that claim is of value in this study. My boss Dick Lewontin once countered an “interconnectedness” claim by saying something like “Yes, but this doesn’t mean that the emissions of a supernova has any effect on my gardening.” The defense continues:
The article’s dismissal of the project as “science-dissing” also reveals a lack of understanding of the historical context of Māori knowledge. The colonization of Aotearoa (New Zealand) has led to the suppression and marginalization of Māori knowledge systems. The “Whale Song” project represents a significant step towards reclaiming and revitalizing this knowledge, and should be viewed not as a rejection of science, but as acomplementary approach to addressing the challenges facing our environment.
The article’s reliance on anecdotal evidence to support its claims, such as the anonymous scientist’s “concerns,” further undermines its credibility. It is essential to approach discussions about Māori knowledge with respect, humility, and a willingness to engage in meaningful dialogue rather than resorting to prejudiced and discriminatory language.
The “Whale Song” project, while perhaps unconventional, represents a valuable opportunity to explore the potential of Māori knowledge in addressing environmental challenges. It is crucial to approach such initiatives with an open mind and a genuine desire to learn from different ways of knowing.
Science is based on dispute, attempts to falsify, and constant criticism. Here the author argues that indigenous knowledge should be immune to that type of criticism, as it’s is seen as “disrespectful.” (The implication is that it’s also bigoted.) The very motivation for this project—a claim that walking whales were friends with kauri trees—is so ludicrous that the project should be dismissed unless there are preliminary modern scientific tests showing there’s even a hope that it would work. Modern science is indeed at work on kauri blight, and has even identified the organism causing it. To me, that gives more hope of a cure than does this project.
Conclusion:
This article serves as a reminder that genuine engagement with Mātauranga Māori requires a willingness to move beyond Western-centric perspectives and embrace the richness and complexity of indigenous knowledge systems. Only through respectful dialogue and a commitment to understanding can we truly appreciate the value
Once again, the author tries to render indigenous science immune from criticism because it’s “rich and complex”. That alone is not sufficient to sacralize indigenous knowledge. If we’re to move forward with real knowledge about the world, projects like this one should be subject to exactly the same kind of criticism as is modern science.
Once again I quote former pastor Mike Aus. Bolding is mine.
When I was working as a pastor I would often gloss over the clash between the scientific world view and the perspective of religion. I would say that the insights of science were no threat to faith because science and religion are “different ways of knowing” and are not in conflict because they are trying to answer different questions. Science focuses on “how” the world came to be, and religion addresses the question of “why” we are here. I was dead wrong. There are not different ways of knowing. There is knowing and not knowing, and those are the only two options in this world.
If you want to know if whale songs and whale oil and bone cure kauri blight in nature, there is no option save the experimental tools of modern science.
I’ve wasted a lot of time on this post, for there are many initiatives like it that need criticism, and time is limited. But then again, the taxpayers of New Zealand need to know that they’re wasting their money on projects like this one.
And, I wonder, why did the site take down the post—twice? Was it too embarrassing to publish? Your guess is as good as mine.
I think this quote that I usually put on this category post stands :
“… and so the dialectic continues.”
-Delgado and Stefancic
Critical Race Theory – An Introduction, p.66, 3rd Ed., 2017
In particular the attempted provocation to political warfare that is in the design of the dialectic.
Perhaps a more inspiring quote:
“It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”
-Richard P. Feynman
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Chapter 7, “Seeking New Laws”, p.150 (Modern Library edition, 1994)
.. these posts are never a waste of time for me as a reader, for the numerous thoughtful quotes above, consistent with Orwell’s quote about paying attention to things under your “nose”, and this :
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
-Blaise Pascal
Pensées
sec. SECTION XIV: APPENDIX: POLEMICAL FRAGMENTS, no. 864
17th c., posthumous
(1670 2nd. ed.)
Cool quote from Feynman.
I also agree that Bryan (Mister TP) is right to say that Jerry is not waisting his time with posts like that. In fact, this post actually gives a great example, easily understood by almost everyone, of how nonsensical it is to treat MM as if it is on the same level as modern science, another ways of knowing.
Some other nice quotes:
🖖
… it’s also about, despite these quotes (I’d call them “based”..), no one person or thing they said is sacred either – we can all find issues – Feynman called it a “guess” – not perfect, and not comprehensive! But his point is clear – and that is what makes this robust.
But as Krauss also noted in a piece, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Which thought and ideas bring clarity, transparency, and are robust …
Woah I’ll stop there!
As a matter of fact, empirical evidence IS the sole measure of validity.
Abstract -> Negation -> Concrete
The dialectic in general – here, negation of empiricism to release “the complexities of Māori knowledge”.
Which would result further in the abstract, and far from material.
It’s Hegel, developed from Kant.
They could just get RFK Jr. to bungee cord another whale skull to the roof of his car and drive it through the kauri tree forests.
Ha! It’s so crazy it just might work.
Sorry to go all Jordan Peterson, who many view as a bit of a crank (with some justification), but I still find value in some of his earlier work (when he was still mainly a professor and therapist) regarding average temperamental differences between men and women. He pointed out that, on average, men tend to be a bit more disagreeable than women, who in turn tend to look more for consensus.
I wonder, what with higher education including science being increasingly dominated by women, that the tendency to be less disagreeable is a factor in things like this acceptance of Maori “ways of knowing”. It’s almost as if the values of accuracy, as in “is this claim actually true”, are clashing with other values, as in “are we making sure that everyone feels included?”.
As Jerry explained, “…science is based on dispute, attempts to falsify, and constant criticism…”, which necessarily involves a level of disagreeableness. Perhaps this is gradually being phased out as science is becoming less male dominated.
I think that’s a possibility. But I also see a continuation of the very old split between science and “common sense” methods of understanding the world, which have a strong tendency to jump to conclusions and give a lot of weight to what satisfies the sense of meaning and purpose. This second approach constantly rears its head because it works well enough in enough ordinary circumstances that it gets validated and reinforced.
There’s a set of writers that constitute Scottish Common Sense Realism.
Beattie comes to mind.
Sort of a reaction to Hume.
Also – very unfamiliar with the lit – but it’s said that is the train of thought from which the United States founders developed their ideas for a constitutional republic….
I agree. With the feminization argument AND the fact JP had some worthwhile observations and arguments until the last few years when he seems to have flown a bit off into space.
D.A.
NYC
To work with this idea I’ve been considering the ideas of Pathos vs. Logos – these are old ideas and I’m unfamiliar with the details.
In modern parlance, emotional vs. logical. Sorta obvious, but it’s from a long line of literature considering what, precisely, is a good description of human nature.
I think Nietzsche is a writer in this vein.
This may contribute but I think that Western cultural factors are more important. In my Eastern European country, science is quite feminized but there is little wokeness, and it is confined to non-STEM fields under strong Western cultural influence.
Maybe of interest:
Noah Carl: Did women in academia cause wokeness? Nov 24, 2021
https://noahcarl.substack.com/p/did-women-in-academia-cause-wokeness
Noteworthy results from a survey of anthropologist:
SE3 Traditional indigenous knowledge no less “true” – half of women agree (19% of men)
SE4 Science is just one way of knowing – 36% of women agree (12% of men)
SE10 Advocacy and fieldwork kept separate for objectivity – 56% of women disagree (34% of men)
MR6 AAA should not propose resolutions, boycotts, etc. – 62% of women disagree (43% of men)
Sorry, but insisting that “you don’t understand” is not an argument. It’s simply a ploy to shut you down. If it’s really true that indigenous knowledge protagonists hold to an epistemology where “you don’t understand” counts, then it’s all over with them. Resorting to reason is futile. The only hope is that sane members of the population read the exchange of views and insist that their government changes course.
I don’t understand why the relatively new, non-woke New Zealand government hasn’t ended this nonsense of cramming MM into science classes and treating MM as if is on the same level as modern science.
I would appreciate any Kiwi explaining this to us.
This is even harmful to the Maoris. Young Maoris’ could be taught science and they could become scientists. But no, they are teaching this nonsense for the benefit of grifters like Dr. Rawiri Waretini-Karena (the author of the article Jerry is criticizing) and various ethnic entrepreneurs.
Are we white people traumatized and lacking in self-esteem because important concepts in mathematics came from India and Arabia?
Ok, my apologies but I have to ask; where did this non-sequitur come from and where did you expect it to go?
I think we are not supposed to say that MM comes up short when compared to modern science – saying so is “disrespectful” (see, e.g., the response to Jerry by Dr. Rawiri Waretini-Karena) and probably also deemed damaging to the self-esteem of the Maoris.
It is a woke commonplace that (historical) victims never be corrected or criticized – that would be “punching down.” And that is verboten.
BTW, Maori may have been victims of white colonizers but others have been their victims. E.g. they have committed a genocide against a related but peaceful tribe, the Moriori. It is described in the beginning of Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel”. But when Maori activists portray their nation as 100% innocent victims, nobody dares to drag them off their high horse.
The new government is changing the laws and directing quangos to make their funding decisions on original aims without race or mystic quotes. However, it is a lot of damage they have to undo from the previous administration’s lunacy and a lot only come to light when articles like this appear. They are also directing STEM subjects go back to core, which has many in education bureaucracy horrified. The comment was made seriously that teachers need resources and training to be able to teach the times table to juniors.
From the looks of the data, the funding was under previous administration. I doubt he will be getting any more grants
I’ve recently been reading about Sir Francis Bacon and his four “idols” (idols of the tribe, the cave, the marketplace and the theatre). Idols in this sense are eidola – transient phantom and probably erroneous images of things. In modern terms these are similar to confirmation bias, group think, ideologic preferences, and other tendencies which deceive us.
Which leads around to my question… what methods or processes does MM use to avoid these tendencies? Because if it has no self-correcting methodology you have no way of knowing whether any aspect of MM is true or just an idol (in the Baconian sense).
Regarding Jerry writing:
Any version of the article, just archive it, which is easily done (once archived, sharing it is also very easy):
Just open the article in your browser. Then go the archive site, and paste the article’s URL into the box entitled “My url is alive and I want to archive its content.” Hit enter. Wait a little. Done. Copy the URL of the archived version – to be used for your personal purpose.
Thank you for that. It appears to work from my iPhone.
“Mātauranga Māori…is a dynamic, evolving system of knowledge, practices, and beliefs that have been developed and refined over generations through observation, experimentation, and deep connection to the natural world.”
That’s fair and I’m willing to give Waretini-Karena the benefit of the doubt that there really was experimentation in historical development of MM.
But all that stopped 300 years ago with European contact. Same here on Turtle Island. MM and other indigenous knowledge systems are no longer dynamic or evolving. They’re now historical relics. Nothing about indigenous knowledge or practices has changed (and in particular has not improved) since colonization.
By contrast, global scientific understanding of the world and the complexity of our tools has increased so much since the 17th century that most technological systems in our hospitals, cars, or phones would be indistinguishable from magic to even the most knowledgeable 17th century scientist. No one is trying to make 17th century industrial technology or medical practices relevant again, or teach them in schools. Why should we teach similarly archaic MM or other indigenous knowledge systems? Except maybe as a topic in anthropology or comparative religion?
Question for readers: the new medical school at my university is going to teach indigenous knowledge to trainee doctors. Should they also teach blood-letting and the theory of the four humours?
Amen.
I wonder how effective medicine was up to about 150 years ago, anywhere. I’m sure that doctors did some good, and there may have been some narrow areas where genuine expertise was attained. But until the germ theory of disease was well understood, what could a doctor really do about infectious diseases? And how did surgery get done without effective techniques for anesthesia?
A lot of medical treatment 150+ years ago might have been little more than the placebo effect and luck…
Draining pus and (rapid) amputation for compound fractures before gangrene set in undoubtedly saved many lives even before anesthesia, surgical asepsis, and better knowledge of human physiology made more ambitious surgery possible. Much medicine was common sense honed by observation and record-keeping and a good doctor was one who protected his patients from fashionable but baseless therapeutic enthusiasm while not being pilloried as a nihilist and run out of town.
That said, the Flexner Report of 1910 which reformed medical education marked the watershed moment in history where the average patient consulting the average doctor for the average condition would, on average, obtain benefit and not harm from the encounter.
Jeff, I recommend:
David Wootton: Bad medicine: Doctors doing harm since Hippocrates. Oxford University Press, 2006 (2007 paperback edition has a new postscript)
David Wootton (born 1952) is a British historian. He is Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York.
On the back of the paperback edition:
Where did people keep their hippos before Hippocrates?!
In hippo crates, obviously.
Some clever Greek guy got a trade mark right on the proper name and has been getting royalties ever since.
In the hippocampus in the brain, silly!
D.A.
NYC
Thanks for the recommendation.
Clare Tomalin’s book “Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self” includes a description of an operation to remove Pepys’s kidney stone in 1658. It makes for leg-crossing reading, but it does indicate that the barber-surgeons of that time knew their human anatomy, and the likely most successful ways of treating their patients. Pepys lived for over 40 years after the op.
I should add that it might be regarded as one aspect of the MM of its time.
Your concluding sentence seems true to me, but before germ theory was known, some surgeons and doctors were well aware of anti-sepsis treatment. Here is a brief report on the remarkable surgical treatment of Prince Henry, later King Henry V, for a severe head wound in 1403.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/videos/henry-v-surgery-0020783
The article also links to a 13 minute documentary which goes into specific detail on the treatment.
Well said.
One possible benefit of teaching some indigenous knowledge to medical students might be in the way it could help with communication to patients who are indigenous. Indigenous knowledge is useless, pretty much, as medical knowledge, but as many of us know, a good bedside manner matters a lot. Knowing something about the beliefs of your patients might help whatever therapy appropriate medical training suggests.
Agree about bedside manner and mutual respect. In my city, new doctors have to learn to dodge around a lot of the wacky spiritual beliefs of their patients (qigong, reiki, ayurveda). I’m sure there’s some benefit to adding the local Coast Salish spirituality to that mix.
That’s what I hoped it is about- helping science-based medical practitioners understand a different culture so they can successfully treat them in the light of belief systems that can be obstacles. Surely not as “alternative medicine a doc might wish to try”.
It’s a little darker than teaching origin stories. The goal of indigenization of the curriculum is to indoctrinate students that the poor health status of their indigenous patients is due to settler colonialism and racism, which they, the students, are the agents and beneficiaries of. But for us, indigenous people would still be living healthy fulfilling lives using their traditional foods, medicines, and social structures which we, you see, have separated them from.
You can imbibe all this and come to believe it in your heart but that makes you more dangerous because you will have a false sense of cultural competence. You might think it’s like learning how to tie square knots that won’t “tumble” without having to let go of the ends of the suture — master it and you’re done. No, the demands of “culturally safe care” require that you recognize you will always be inadequate because you can never erase the stain of colonialism. You must communicate this cultural humility and unworthiness whenever you interact with indigenous patients individually and, as an advocate of specific political positions, on Turtle Island generally.
https://dialogue.cpso.on.ca/2020/12/treating-root-causes-not-symptoms/
(Dr. Lisa Richardson, profiled in the article, is now Associate Dean, Diversity and Inclusion in the U of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.)
Thanks for the link. The article and the reporter describe a really sad and bleak view of Canada.
If blood-letting and the theory of the four humours is taken up by some privileged branch of Alternative Medicine, it will probably be taught to medical students. The incursion of indigenous knowledge into modern medicine was proceeded and made easier by an earlier invasion of “treatments” like reiki, acupuncture, and homeopathy. Letting the patients choose what they want and evaluate the results for themselves is what was practiced before the scientific method. But it’s what we ourselves instinctively want to do.
I think a case could be made for the area of health and Alternative Medicine being the entryway for a lot of these other attacks on modern science.
The treatment will probably have a positive effect, and THEN you’ll be sorry!
No I won’t; I’ll be glad that they cured the kauri blight. But I’ll bet it won’t work.
We can be sure this fantasy-based treatment won’t work on trees any more than homeopathy works on people. But has anyone considered that this arboreal quackery could HARM the trees? Depending on how much oil they’re putting on the trees, the oil could saturate the soil and the tree bark, thus preventing respiration. The oil could also provide food for damaging microorganisms. This is just off the top of my head.
If these people cared more about the trees than about being recognized as equal or superior to ‘Western’ scientists, they’d concede that Western methods are far superior to indigenous methods in ensuring that treatments intended to cure don’t harm instead.
I think we should not call it ‘Western,’ as Science is just ‘Science’ as opposed to the mishegass above discussed… science is about universals, equally true on the moons of Jupiter, or in the stars of Andromeda, as here on Earth, east or west, north or south. If their knowing was valid, it would have to not be just for their islands, but for everywhere.
I just refuse to acknowledge that anyone has the right to be wrong.
I don’t think it was your intention, but in that sentence you identify exactly what is wrong with the MM approach:
Given that there exists no experimental design, no defined standard for measuring baselines and results, no critical analysis, and no controls, you can NEVER KNOW if it had a positive effect anyway.
The trees’ health may very well improve at some point, but that doesn’t mean it was the whale bones what did it guv.
In 1901, John Dewey wrote that Darwin changed everything and that knowledge pre-1859 was history. Sam Harris makes a similar point when he says that the average person on the street today knows more about how the world really works than anybody writing in the middle-ages (Aquinas, More, Augustine…).
The lesson applies equally well to MM.
This reminds me that I’ve been wanting to make the point that Jerry is possibly too generous in conceding that indigenous people – people who have depended upon and been immersed in their natural environment for generations – may have knowledge that non-indigenous people lack. I say this as somebody who consumes ethnographies like popcorn. E.g., currently I’m reading an account by an anthropologist (c. 1980 or so) of his field research among the Dowayo people of Cameroon. He makes this point:
>The basic truth about Dowayos is that they knew less about the animals of the African bush than I did…. They believed, like most Africans, that chameleons were poisonous. They assured me that cobras were harmless. They did not know that caterpillars turn into butterflies. They could not tell one bird from another or be relied upon to identify trees accurately…. As far as ‘living in harmony with nature’ is concerned, the Dowayos are non-starters. They reproached me often for not bringing a machine gun from the land of the white men to enable them to finally eradicate the pathetic clusters of antelope that still persist in their country….
The reality is that indigenous people (i.e., people who have not yet been ‘modernized’ and still live like their ancestors) can – and usually do – harbor tons of false beliefs about their own environment. What especially interests me is the fact that these false beliefs can persist not only when they’re neutral with respect to survival but when they’re positively detrimental – e.g., beliefs that certain common food stuffs will make people sick or call down the wrath of the ancestors when in fact the foods are safe and nutritious.
This comment resonates strongly with my own experience in the Amazon. I lived in indigenous communities in the jungle for a couple of years, and I have often said almost exactly the same thing as you, word for word. The people I lived with believe that harmless geckos are among the most venomous animals, because their dorsal pattern is similar to the pattern on a deadly snake, the fer-de-lance. If they saw one n their house, they would ask me to get them out. I made the geckos bite my finger in front of them, to show they were harmless, but they concluded I had power over geckos. And they believe that dangerous end of the coral snake is its tail, not its head.
I was shocked, as you were, to see these errors not only in trivial matters but in questions of vital practical life-and-death importance.
And far from being “protectors of the forests”, many tribes (not all of them though) kill everything that moves, often for sport or for spite, often with no intention of eating what they kill. They often tried to kill small hummingbirds just because the birds were sitting near them and singing. They told me these bird were “teasing” them. There are no large birds or animals anywhere near most Shuar jungle villages. They seemed to almost completely lack empathy for other living creatures, though in fairness we act the same when we buy chunks of meat from a grocery store; the forest IS their grocery store.
They also believe that their shamans physically turn into jaguars on some nights and wander the forest. I pressed them on this point and they made it clear that this was not a figurative transformation but 100% literal and real.
My friends were however excellent botanists, at least for trees.
This is a very interesting take on the matter, I read it with great interest! Do you know whether there have been systematic attempts to assess the accuracy of indigenous people’s beliefs about nature or whether such information currently remains mostly anecdotal? Either way, it would be interesting to know.
Thank you for fascinating first-hand account!
I’ve read tons about the Yanomami. Are they the people you were working with?
No, I’ve worked with the Kichwa, Shuar, and Huaorani tribes. Tribes differ greatly in their knowledge. I have the impression that the latter two groups have more accurate knowledge than the former, but this is just an impression. I have not done a serious study of it.
I really want to record these groups’ knowledge of the night sky. This is a sort of universal field that all cultures are equally exposed to. It is fascinating to see which cultures have gone so far as to be able to notice and predict the motions of planets, etc. Some cultures seem to be thousands of years ahead of others in this regard.
This is quite eye opening…thanks for sharing!
Hmmm… religion is religion is religion, no matter how you dress it up!
I wanted to know a little bit more about the Kauri dieback disease. It is caused by a phytophthora, phylum oomycetes (water mould) and is a member of a proposed (~1981, 2015) eukaryotic kingdom called Chromista (I didn’t even know about this proposed kingdom!) in a seven kingdom classification system. It’s spores are soil-borne or sometimes water-borne (hence forest closures and disinfection of shoes and equipment). In any case, a brief 2 page scientific discussion for the public of Kauri dieback can be found here:
https://www.bionet.nz/assets/Uploads/the-science-kauri-dieback-v2.pdf
Good fact!
I’d be calling it far worse than you would, you know our way with words!
Keep up the good work PCC(E).
You are in a unique position – almost alone – in being able to fight back against this nonsense.
The NZ article above was probably removed for embarrassment reasons. It is dreadful, and typical, of that kind of thinking.
D.A.
NYC
Meanwhile, my NZ senior school yesterday advertised a post for second in charge of Science. One of the position’s key requirements is to assist with the introduction of Matauranga Maori into the Science curriculum, and successfully doing so will be a key performance indicator.
Sadly this is not unique, the entire education system in NZ, from kindy to postdoc, is geared to promoting stoneage mythology that has no place in Science. You are not permitted to question it. MM is sacred. It’s always right. It cannot be critiqued. Your employment depends on you accepting it.
As always, thank you so much Jerry for providing a place where this dreadful agenda can safely be discussed.
Oh my gosh, I did have to laugh. Controlled tests comparing one group against another are too limiting! (Yes, those studies tend to limit one to facts that anyone can discover.) You have to appreciate the complexities of Maori knowledge! (Yes, when you allow for passed-down folklore it does complicate things.)
Is it possible that whale oil could kill or retard the growth of the Kauri blight oomycete in a petri dish? Sure! just as orange juice, coffee, vinegar, vigorous shaking, or applying hot urine might conceivably have clinically relevant effects. What really matters is whether whale oil (or any treatment), if it has any effect at all, shows *greater effectiveness* and *greater field efficacy* than existing treatments like broad-spectrum antifungal/antimicrobial agents (e.g. copper sulfate) or, hell, even Tough Actin’ Tinactin. A decent junior high school science fair project that would get more meaningful (and cheaper) results than this endeavor might look at the relative effects on Kauri blight of whale oil, whale songs, Coca-Cola (regular, diet, AND Coke Zero), hand sanitizer, Head & Shoulders shampoo, purified H2O, and songs by the punk band H2O.
Am Australian science popularizer had a radio show where he talked to callers about science things. If anyone started talking a about a phenomenon and a possible cause for said phenomena Dr Carl would say, first go and get a notebook and make careful timed observations over a particular length of time, just to be sure that the various factors were accurately assessed and devoid of as much human bias and mental fuzziness as possible.
I don’t see the same rigor in indigenous type knowledge. And the more “rich and complex” something is the more it needs accurate records.
And, so called western science, aka science, is so rich and complex that is breathtaking compared to various oral traditions, interesting as they may be.
Well, they couldn’t write things down or time things, not having writing, counting, or clocks. “Complex” in the traditional-knowledge sense means that understanding and knowledge of “connection” is racially restricted (by the good grace of the Creator) and typically to a particular caste of knowledge keepers therein. Since tribal members cannot contradict them, they regard it as egregiously disrespectful when outsiders presume to. Or so they claim.
How, exactly, did the whales roam the earth? How did they stay hydrated?
Yes, that’s a good question, and one I’d like the proponents of that myth to answer. I suppose they’d invoke miracles.
I notice that in this discussion, that in New Zealand there is no attention being paid to The Satanic Temple way of knowledge. I find that outrageous. I want to speak to the manager.
Comments on post #7 above report that some Canadian med schools are introducing Matauranga Firsti Nationsi into the curriculum—a trend that perhaps flowed from non-medical faculties at such enlightened loci as Mt. Royal and Concordia.
This fashion has not yet reached us south of the border, but we have a different trend, which might be called Matauranga Kendi. To wit (from the Seattle Medium):
“The Black Health Justice Pathway provides students with foundational knowledge to assess health inequities through a critical lens. It is designed to help students advocate for health equity within the UWSOM, in Black communities, and in their future careers.
According to Holly Kennison, Healthcare Equity Pathway Program Manager at the UWSOM, pathway programs are becoming more popular around the nation within medical schools, but remain relatively rare, and the UWSOM highlights this as a significant benefit of its medical program.”
“If you want to know if whale songs and whale oil and bone cure kauri blight in nature, there is no option save the experimental tools of modern science.”
Yes.
You will as much success in ‘converting’ these MM advocates to scientific ways of thinking as you would converting Richard Dawkins to mysticism. Thank you for your work though. The more these MM folk talk, the more they bury themselves in self deception. It’s religion. Nothing more, nothing less.
My goal is not to convert MM advocates to modern science so much as to publicize a debate that’s being squelched in NZ because of fear. In other words, I provide a “safe space” for critics of MM or other alternative “ways of knowing” to publicize the craziness that’s going on in Aotearoa.
Science is left-brain thinking. It is useful for some things but not others. IMO a lot of people are brainwashed into solely a left-brain POV – as if their right brain had been lobotomised – making them as logical and spectrumy as Spock.
A right-brain view is also valid. It exists in complete contrast to the left. It is not logical and reductionist – rather it is holistic and non-linear. It is social and emotional and somewhat mysterious. It is a different way of knowing. It is not impersonal and universal like left-brain science – it is personal and localised and unique like any social group.
The Maori view on healing the Kauri trees is plainly right-brained. It is valid even though it confuses and aggravates left-brained geeks and nerds.
Here is an example of right-brain healing. When I was a child I was sick and had the day off school. My grandmother visited and brought me some broken-up pieces of chocolate easter egg. She read me Where The Wild Things Are. She loved me. I believe that helped me get better. Love is a powerful healer.
I’m sure left-brained cultists would dispute my claim because love is unquantifiable, unmeasurable, unlocatable and pseudoscientific. It’s not empirical so it’s not real – right? Wrong. It just doesn’t fit the narrow scientific model of the world – which after all is just an abstraction.
I believe that Maori are healing the forest with love. If you don’t believe me then don’t bother lecturing me about the scientific method; instead go and find a mother or a nurse or someone who can teach you about the healing power of love.
I don’t think you understand the point of this article. In what respect is “the Māori view of healing kauri trees by playing songs to them “valid” because it is plainly “right-brained”? The left-brained versus right-brained distinction has turned out to be largely a myth, yet you have bought into it.
And yes, you are going to get a lecture. Nobody denies that emotional involvement can make someone feel psychologically better, but your “evidence” that you were cured with love is this:
What you “believe” here may not be true: how do you know that you wouldn’t have gotten better physically without the love and chocolate? You don’t: you’re just making a guess. And as for love being a powerful healer, it sure hasn’t worked on the many children who die of leukemia.
It is thinking like yours, confused, anecdotal, and making unsubstantiated or false assertions based on what you would LIKE to think, that is eroding science in New Zealand.
To Maori Man:
Your comment won’t play well here, but I have to say I very much appreciate your explanation. I became very ill last November. I eventually was given a diagnosis that was arrived at through biopsies that were taken from my colon. So, “western medicine” did what it was supposed to. I accepted it, reconciled myself to it and fully bought into the “I’m sick” way of thinking. It sucked. I despised my “new normal”. The only trick in the doctors (plural) bag of tricks was steroids — long term use of them — which, knowing what steroids do to the body (destroy it! Eat up your bones, raise your blood pressure, screw up most of your organs, etc etc), I refused to take. I was fully prepared to continue wasting away and die of starvation. One day, about a month ago, I woke up and said (to myself), “I’ve had it with this shit. I’m done being sick and I’m through with this diagnosis”. And I got better. When my friends ask me how this happened, my response is, “I took my power back”. It defies reason. What can I say?
If you can heal the forest with love, why do you need all that taxpayers’ money?
As our host says, left- vs right- brain thinking is mostly a pop psychology extrapolation from some recognized differences in function of the two cerebral hemispheres demonstrated by people who had strokes or brain trauma and then had autopsies done to see what part of their brains had been damaged. This is entirely a scientific formulation, let’s call it European since that’s where much of the anatomical correlative brain science was worked out. You can’t just arbitrarily borrow it, with tropes from Star Trek, centuries after the fact to dress up MM to make it sound good. Well, I suppose you can, but it just makes it sound more like nonsense.
But leaving all that aside, don’t you even care if spreading a little love around the kauri trees actually cures them? It takes more than love. It takes physical resources like whale oil and whale bones, too, which are limited. You have only so much labour to apply the medicine with and many, many trees to save. Shouldn’t you be at least a little curious about whether it works, in order to put your limited resources, albeit enhanced with government grants, to best use?
I think the elder in one of the videos who said he put whale oil on seven sick kauri trees and now they are healthy is either deceiving himself or lying to us. Prove me wrong.
Which kind of brain do kauri trees have? How about the Phytophthora kauri blight?
The thing that amazes me most, of all of this, is the idea that kauri or the blight *cares* about human feelings.
This romanticism and elevation of MM has been going on for a while. Ultimately I think it is detrimental to Māori. My white sister in law is, like me, also a nurse trained in NZ. In their desire to support Māori, she and her nurse and doctor colleagues at the top children’s in NZ allowed some Māori parents to administer Māori remedies, known to be harmful, to their very ill child in the hospital in the 1990s, in the idea that they were supporting Māori. As a Māori, I was appalled at the sanctioning of worst practice in the clinical setting and suggested that Māori deserve best practice. She insisted that this was a great idea until I asked her if she would be prepared to support allowing this care in a coroners court. Suddenly her opinion changed.
“And the dialectic continues…” is apposite and correct. However, some estimable people have been misusing Ayan Rand’s essay on The Return of The Primitive concerning Northland Regional Council’s adoption, visceral adoption to be precise, of Atua and Karakia etc for water use for The Annual Plan. These estimables have absolutely missed the point of the dialectical sorcery involved. That is, science is the oppresor, the Maori way of knowing is the oppressed. And so the dialectic spins further into the darkness of hyper unreality. Maori culture has been parasitised and colonised by Marxism. You can say this over and over but it is only the Estimables who get heard and published.
To be honest, as a New Zealander I find this all so utterly depressing. It’s as if we are teaching ourselves that it’s OK to accept things that are highly questionable, or in fact demonstrably false, as long as those falsehoods are culturally acceptable in some manner. Am I alone in finding this to be more than just mildly worrisome? What does this mean for our future? How can we expect to navigate the challenges that lie ahead and leave a better world for our children if we accept this a an operating mode? An example:
https://waateanews.com/2024/07/19/matauranga-aids-te-urewera-survey/
Quote: “Just based on the wing-beats of that bird I knew exactly where that bird was going, and the condition of that bird. And I asked the technicians, the experts, what they thought – and they couldn’t give me a response. And that gave me real value around the knowledge that I had and the experience that I had,” he says. Māori from around the country could relate similar experiences in their forests, waterways, or even with the changing of seasons … and that knowledge needs to be incorporated into the collection of data.”
I understand that the ancestors of the Māori first arrived in New Zealand by canoe in the 1300’s. (Immigrants like us all!!)
So just how do they know historically what happened within the country previously to their arrival to this land?
How do they know that the Whales walked the land alongside the Kauri Trees?
Perhaps it was the Kauri trees who went for a swim with their Whale brothers!
Just how do they know this If they were not here to witness the event!
Oh, silly me. IT’s ALL MADE UP!!!!!!!!! (aka. NOT TRUE!!)