I’ve mentioned before that at the University of Aucklannd—New Zealand’s most prestigious university—every student has to take a mandatory course related to indigenous knowledge, a course ostensibly related to their their field of study. In reality, these courses are exercises in propaganda, created to indoctrinate students into sacralizing indigenous “ways of knowing”. As an example, I gave this course, which is required for all science majors. Click to access the course description, which I went through a while back (see the link above).
Now I’m going to be on a radio show in New Zealand next week (stay tuned!), talking about the ideological distortion of that country’s science, and it’s a great chance for me to share my thoughts with Kiwis without the fear of being punished. To prepare for the show, I have a pile of stuff to read and review, and, besides the whale/kauri tree mishigass that I described before, I managed to get hold of the syllabus for this course. (It came from an anonymous New Zealander, of course; they are too afraid to reveal personal information on this site.) You might have a listen to this podcast on related issues, and this 140-page report about the “culture of fear” among New Zealand academics is indispensable in explaining why all my correspondents insist on remaining anonymous. In that country you stand to lose your job if you even raise your voice to contest the academic Zeitgeist.
The course syllabus is in fact frightening in its “progressive” authoritarianism and its neglect of real science in favor of ideology. I can’t find the syllabus on the Internet (I got it from someone who wants to remain anonymous), but would be glad to send a pdf to those who request it. Here’s the heading of the syllabus:
If you read the course description, you’ll see that it’s largely designed to inculcate students into the (1840) Treaty of Waitangi (in Māori: “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”) as a way of showing that Māori ways of knowing, or Mātauranga Māori (MM), should be considered coequal to modern science. This, in turn, is part of a push to insinuate indigenous ways of knowing into New Zealand science, as well as giving Māori increased power over what science is done and how it is done. (For my criticisms of this approach, see the many pieces I’ve written about it.) The general view of the indigenous people of New Zealand is that Māori have the sole power to use and control how indigenous knowledge is used. That’s in contrast to modern science, in which no ethnic group has any control about what projects are done or funded.
I’ll simply give some highlighted extracts from the syllabus. Remember, the course required for all science majors at Auckland Uni. I’ll have to give screenshots as copy-paste doesn’t work well. Ask for the 15-page pdf if you want to check it out.
Here we go:
The rest of the bits below are from the course schedule. A whole week, the second, is devoted to the Treaty of Waitangi. “What does this have to do with science?”, you ask. Good question! See below. “Aotearoa” is the Māori term for New Zealand, and woe to whoever forgets to use it when referring to their country. Note the emphasis on the importance of “place,” which we’ll discuss shortly.
As Wikipedia notes, about one term below, “Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei or Ngāti Whātua-o-Ōrākei is an Auckland-based Māori hapū (sub-tribe) in New Zealand.” Again, the relationship to science eludes me, but the relationship to ideology is clear. The emphasis on “place” for science is grossly distorted, as science should be pretty much the same no matter where it’s done. But the reason is clear: science (e.g, MM) done in New Zealand is thought to be critically different from science done elsewhere. In reality, the place where science is done, except in those cases where the object of study is in a particular location, is irrelevant. And the place where science is done has no effect on how science is practiced, even if you’re doing field work in a particular place in, say, Alaska.
Ah, my favorite topic, “knowledge systems”, appears:
Note that MM is characterized as a “knowledge system.” This is untrue. There is some empirical “knowledge” in there, but it’s based largely on trial and error, is specific to New Zealand (where and when to pick berries or catch eels), and is larded and guided by myth, as in the kauri tree/whale research. In that case, based on Māori mythology, people are trying to play whale songs and utter Māori prayers to kauri trees dying en masse of an oomycete infection, and rubbing sperm whale oil and ground-up bones on the trunks. This is based on a mythological belief about the relationship between whales and kauri trees so ludicrous that it defies belief (see here and here).
And, as I’ve discussed ad infinitum, MM is more than just “knowledge”: it includes superstition, mythology, religion, guidelines for behavior, morality, and traditions handed down by word of mouth. If you consider such stuff “knowledge”, then there are a gazillion competing and conflicting “knowledge systems” in the world, each corresponding to the views of indigenous people in a different area. But of course there is only one form of modern science. Chemistry, for example is understood and practiced the same way by chemists throughout the world.
Another trope pops up in Week 7: the weaknesses of modern science:
That needs no comment; I’ve discussed it before and it’s largely science-dissing.
But wait! The course isn’t done yet! They haven’t yet gone over the value of narrative and storytelling in science communication. Remember, this course is taking up time that could be use to teach science itself. “Pūrākao” is “storytelling” in Māori:
Finally, in the penultimate week, the sweating science majors have to learn more about the Treaty of Waitangi:
Now what is the relevance of “Te Tiriti” to science? There isn’t one, really, as the treaty was signed in 1840 and its main goals are outlined at the site New Zealand History (excerpt below). Note that not all Māori tribes signed this treaty, and its interpretation is still subject to dispute:
The Treaty is a broad statement of principles on which the British and Māori made a political compact to found a nation state and build a government in New Zealand. The document has three articles. In the English version, Māori cede the sovereignty of New Zealand to Britain; Māori give the Crown an exclusive right to buy lands they wish to sell, and, in return, are guaranteed full rights of ownership of their lands, forests, fisheries and other possessions; and Māori are given the rights and privileges of British subjects.
The Treaty in Māori was deemed to convey the meaning of the English version, but there are important differences. Most significantly, the word ‘sovereignty’ was translated as ‘kawanatanga’ (governance). Some Māori believed they were giving up government over their lands but retaining the right to manage their own affairs. The English version guaranteed ‘undisturbed possession’ of all their ‘properties’, but the Māori version guaranteed ‘tino rangatiratanga’ (full authority) over ‘taonga’ (treasures, which may be intangible). Māori understanding was at odds with the understanding of those negotiating the Treaty for the Crown, and as Māori society valued the spoken word, explanations given at the time were probably as important as the wording of the document.
Different understandings of the Treaty have long been the subject of debate. From the 1970s especially, many Māori have called for the terms of the Treaty to be honoured. Some have protested – by marching on Parliament and by occupying land. There have been studies of the Treaty and a growing awareness of its meaning in modern New Zealand.
Why, then are students majoring in science being force-fed a huge dose of Treaty, which would seem to belong in a New Zealand Aotearoa history course? It’s not absolutely clear, but making science majors learn this stiff is surely part of the effort, promoted both by Māori and woke non-Māori activists, to ensure that MM is taught alongside regular science in the classroom. But again, what does this have to do with the Treaty? My best guess is that because the treaty was a swap of privileges between Māori and Europeans (called “The Crown”), Māori “ways of knowing” should have equal representation in the classroom. That is, MM, which is seen as indigernous science, should be taught as if it were as useful as modern science.
This of course comes from postmodernism, which denies the existence of objective knowledge and sees “knowledge” as the outcome of competing and struggling points of view, with the most powerful group getting its point of view spread most widely. MM is thus in a power struggle with modern science. The Treaty is the rationale that supposedly gives power to MM, though of course there’s nothing about educational systems, much less “ways of knowing,” in the Treaty.
Many think that postmodernism is also a major source of DEI initiatives, and while I won’t weigh in on that, it’s clear that this course is designed to inculcate science majors with the ideology that not only are Māori the victims of colonization (and yes, historically they were oppressed), but are still the victims of colonization, and must assert their presence by having their way of knowing taught in the classroom. And taught not just taught as sociology, anthropology, or history, but as real ongoing science,
The whale/kauri story exemplifies all that is wrong with this initiative, and all that is wrong with this course. It grounds empirical investigation partly in mythology, diverts scientific investigation into blind alleys, and, most of all, takes up time that students could use to learn real science, not mythology or place-specific information about when the berries should be ripe. Many of New Zealand’s universities are funded substantially by high tuition charged to foreign students, particularly those from Asia. If you were a parent who wanted to give a kid a good science education, could you in all honesty look at the syllabus above (again, this is a required science course) and want to send your kid to the University of Auckland?
Needless to say, the indigenization of the science curriculum is happening not just at Auckland University, but through the entire country of New Zealand/Aortearoa. It’s a shame, for the long-term results of this misguided policy are predictable. Anybody who wants to seriously study science will leave the country, and those who remain will become confused over what science really is.
Oh, and I’ll add, as a coda, that this stuff is already going on big time in Canada, and has got its feelers in the U.S. as well. Of course, the “ways of knowing” that are pushed in these places are different from those in New Zealand. But the drive for indigeneity is pretty much the same everywhere.
I see no difference between this and the still existing movement in the US to have “creation science” taught alongside evolution. What is creation science other than the creation stories and traditions of a particular ethno-religious group?
Don’t be surprised if groups promoting creationism adopt the “other ways of knowing” tactics as well…
The creation science movement, like all creationism, is pretty much dead, and died years ago in Dover, Pennsylvania. New Zealand is not at all the same, for the incursion of nonsense into science is GROWING.
Yes, thankfully creation science in the US is very much on the decline (although not completely dead, as this article illustrates https://theconversation.com/30-years-after-edwards-v-aguillard-why-creationism-lingers-in-public-schools-79603).
My comment was more related to the similarity in the concepts…here we have an alternative to science (MM) that is being pushed into education, and this alternative is based on very specific religious and cultural traditions that make claims about reality that are either demonstrably false or unproven. It only seems different because in the case of MM, it’s being pushed by the far Left and not the far Right.
I don’t see why a group of New Zealand creationists couldn’t try to argue that the Judeo-Christian (JC) knowledge system about creation should be taught alongside the standard science as well. What would the objection be from the MM crowd…would it be that in New Zealand the only alternatives to evolution that should be allowed are the local indigenous traditions? Because if they tried to argue that JC creationism should be excluded because it is false, they would be opening themselves up to the same type of empirical criticism.
For me at least, thinking about how people in New Zealand who favor MM being taught and would probably simultaneously reject JC creationism being taught illustrates clearly the incoherence and inconsistency of post-modernism. But perhaps it’s not a good comparison.
Maori activists and their
useful foolsallies would simply argue that JC ways of knowing are oppressive. That would squelch the challenge. The truth claims are irrelevant. Indigenization power is the goal everywhere.Yes Leslie. Totally.
D.A.
NYC
I wouldn’t bury creation science just yet. Project 2025 says that education should be Christian based, as all government should be. And the people pushing for private school vouchers are doing so in order to divert state money to religious schools.
The whole 10 Commandments in classrooms movement is the tip of the spear to force Christian education on public schools. They’re going to keep at this.
>> Project 2025 says that education should be Christian based, as all government should be. <<
Here is the Project 2025 chapter on education. Where does it say that, or anything that can reasonably be construed as that?
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-11.pdf
I don’t think it does, Anonymous Reader.
Not all saying has to be direct. Sometimes it is necessary to read between the lines. The very first paragraph of the Project 2025 chapter on education you linked to calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, support for faith-based institutions, and the empowerment of families over government. The second paragraph calls for taxpayer dollars to be given for school choice. Which religion do you think will profit the most from that choice?
Replying to Ed Bourdon:
Project 2025 is not a cabal of Catholic integralists.
Allowing unconstrained, funded school choice would likely enable many more parents to choose religious options. But most would not, and there’s nothing in Project 2025 that even hints at forcing them to do so, or at any effort to make all education “Christian based”.
With enough imagination you can read anything you want between the lines. There’s a lot of projection going on, on both sides of the partisan divide, to demonize opponents.
New Zealand is a kind of theocracy, run by a priesthood. Though the law against blasphemy was repealed in 2019, something very much like blasphemy is alive and well in New Zealand. i can say this because I’m retired from teaching, so they can’t touch me.
Does the University of Auckland not have to cater to differential fees-paying international students? If not then how does it avoid this trap that has caught hundreds of other pretty good universities that can’t afford the cost of doing business without attracting lots of middle-class students from India, China, and Korea? How do those students respond to this kind of parochial indoctrination about colonization events in which they had no role and to which they have no cultural connection? I hope Ramesh will drop by to help us understand.
“Ah, my favorite topic, ‘knowledge systems.’”
I prefer “knowledges” but am trying to think of this as viewpoint diversity.
Our friend Ramesh will know better but I have a feeling there are still enough fee paying Asians who won’t have heard of the MM madness to effect enrollment numbers in NZ.
I went to high school in Australia with many Malaysian Chinese kids (who weren’t in the Malaysian system b/c of the indigenous racism against non-Muslims in Malaysia/SE Asia).
Malaysia is the original gangsta apartheid state if you’re not “Bumiputra” (sons of the soil, native Muslim Malays).
Somehow in our modern world racism is just a white/Jewish crime…*
D.A.
NYC
*See Thomas Sowel for more on this, including Malaysia.
I see “reflexively” is there as the other post on this, suggesting George Soros’ reflexive alchemy, but perhaps accidental.
But the focus on the treaty in science is possibly to show how societal collective action can transform the world, in particular to transform science, and possibly decolonize the mind, and therefore critical for the curriculum.
What do they do in New Zealand when they build a bridge? Do they have people who learn engineering in the way we have it, in which it is underlaid by physics? If they build bridges by indigenous systems of knowledge, I would think no one could safely drive on their bridges. Do their students learning to fix cars learn how the many systems in modern cars work? Or do you take your car to a garage to have it fixed, and they chant?
At my university we’re building a three-story First Peoples’ Gathering House that will be a “sacred learning space”. The construction company employs indigenous longhouse knowledge keepers who are using traditional cedar log construction methods.
[joke – the construction workers are Mexican guys, and they’re finishing up the steel welding rn]
Yes, and what about medicine? Are people who favor MM going to drive past the hospital and get treated using the indigenous systems of knowledge? That will be the real test of their hypocrisy…
You can look at the programme of studies for all medical students at the University of Auckland. It’s a 6-year course and they all need a course right at the beginning in Biology for Biomedical Science. Just straightforward modern science.
Maori quackery is already funded by the NZ government.
And the University of Waikato wants to start a new medical school that, for sure, will push mumbo jumbo.
Well, according to this Nature article, they really use indigenous systems of knowledge when building roads:
“For example, in Māori tradition, we have these things called taniwha that are like water serpents. When you think of taniwha, you think, danger, risk, be on your guard! Taniwha as physical entities do not exist. Taniwha are a mechanism for describing how rivers behave and change through time. For example, pūrākau say that taniwha live in a certain part of the Waikato River, New Zealand’s longest, running for 425 kilometres through the North Island. That’s the part of the river that tends to flood. Fortunately, officials took knowledge of taniwha into account when they were designing a road near the Waikato river in 2002. Because of this, we’ve averted disasters.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00029-2
Do the believers think Mātauranga Māori, being connected to ‘place’, yet also coequal and complementary with science, is only functional in Aotearoa? If a graduate relocated to a different realm of mysticism, does this ‘knowledge’ become irrelevant? Or do MM proponents make a claim to universality of this ‘knowledge system’? Really don’t understand the claims being made – how does MM supposedly interact/complement/contradict other indigenous knowledges? I find the complicity of actual scientists with this program incomprehensible.
At some point—in a time of crisis—New Zealand will need science and scientists. What will it do then? Rely on the accumulated science available in the literature and from foreign scientists? Or, will it turn to superstition and woo to solve its problems? And will the citizens and leaders of New Zealand know the difference?
Given the power of the internet (which you could only use in the last 20 years of your career, against nonsense Christianity)… and the changes in technology….your work in the last few years against Maori/Indigenous nonsense may well be your most valuable contribution to humanity.
Your contribution — as a lone voice amplified by distance — to that fight is invaluable.
Consider — there are a lot of voices for Israel (yours, mine, many others) in the public domain, but arguing against a specific type of nonsense in an edge part of the anglosphere has… as an ex Wall St. proprietary trader I’d say.. a “fat tail” in results. Or could have. There’s an asymmetry to every word you publish in this fight.
Kudos. Keep up the good work.
D.A.
NYC
That’s a nice benediction, David.
Fees for each course, for both domestic and international students, are here:
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/study/fees-and-money-matters/tuition-fees/fees-by-faculty.html?ref=uoa-assistant
For the SCIGEN 102G joke course the fee is $977.40 for domestic students and $5,405.50 for overseas students, the same as for quantum mechanics. Historically, NZ universities have made a good deal of money from overseas students. This took a big hit during Covid, and overseas student numbers have yet to recover to pre-Covid levels. I am told that one of our coalition parties, NZ First, regards fewer overseas students as a good thing. The compulsory ideology in all courses is, I believe, comparatively recent, and the impact on overseas students’ willingness to come here yet to be determined. David Lillis has a good article expressing concerns here:
https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2024/08/david-lillis-is-tertiary-education-for.html
With regard to engineering, the Auckland University course has treated the subject in a traditional way, and an engineering degree from there is an internationally recognised qualification. However, even here there are worrying signs of the infiltration of junk into the curriculum:
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/engineering/about-the-faculty/matauranga-maori.html
NZ bridges can be built by international engineers, brought into NZ for the purpose. NZ hospitals can be staffed with international doctors and nurses, brought into NZ for the purpose. Cancer treatment used to be a leveller, but that is improving. And, anyway, the rich have ways around the problem: eg, when a middle-aged lawyer friend had cancer, he went to Australia for treatment, then came home to NZ.
The people pushing for equal treatment of MM and global science do not give a fig whether the university attracts good international students. They’ll be happy enough if it attracts poor-quality international students. The MM-advocates probably can’t tell the difference. And both types of students pay the same fees. One interesting beacon: the MM-advocates struggle to up-end certain international accrediting requirements, and these might turn out to be a saving grace in NZ.
NZ culture is a mess right now but the country is still a nice place to live. Foreign professionals will continue to seek to settle here, but they might send their own children to private/independent schools and then ‘home’ for a university education.
So, the people who are screwed are the poor, as usual. These leftist policies will lead directly to a lower quality education for the poor, and the gap between them and the rich will only get wider.
If I didn’t know any better, you’d think that the far left hates the poor!
Far left? They are merely the new elite. Prof Elizabeth Rata of University of Auckland calls the Maori ones “the neo-tribal elite”. There’s big corporate money behind it all and lovely perks and consultancy sinecures.
Ah, but they do. They profit off them. If there were no poor who would they bestow gifts upon? They bestow gifts, receive votes and create a docile, easily controlled populace. If the poor and “marginalized” masses they claim to care about suddenly woke up and realized that they do in fact have agency over their own lives and futures, where would that leave the left? Out of a job.
I should give a few examples: $25,000 to new home buyers, $6,000 to parents to “buy diapers and cribs”, price fixing of groceries… They tried paying off student loans, but were denied the ability… Twice!
Local engineers are perfectly well-qualified as long as the zealots don’t mess with the courses. From the Auckland University web site: “All our specialisations are accredited by Engineering New Zealand, a signatory to the Washington Accord, making our BE(Hons) a recognised engineering qualification in many countries.” And this appeared in July:
https://www.engineeringnz.org/news-insights/auckland-masters-gains-washington-accreditation/
My son has a B.Eng from Auckland, and has worked for clients in the UK, USA, France, and Spain. The Matauranga rubbish mentioned by Sven is worrying, but hopefully is mainly lip service.
All very discouraging. There’s a lot of this stuff in Canada. At least “Canada” is already a native word so it can stay.
But the activists have their eye on names like “British Columbia.”
There is a joke that “Canada” arose from a conversation between French navigator Jacques Cartier and a native chief. Cartier asked, “What do you call this place?” The chief thought he was asking, “Is there any gold around here?” and replied, “Ca? Nada.”
The socialist government of British Columbia is attempting to assign a concept of aboriginal title to the whole province under UNDRIP (including land currently owned by private deed holders.) This would be legislating in an area of federal responsibility and would violate existing Canadian law on the subject but it will take a messy court battle to unravel it, which Canada might still lose (because it’s Canada.) Most areas of dispute between aboriginals and the Canadian Crown — to which all people in Canada including indigenous people, not just Europeans, are subject — are similarly over land and natural resources. There are too few indigenous people who have attained any stature in STEM for them to be messing with the scientific curriculum themselves and it doesn’t have a cash payout value to them. These indigenization efforts mostly come from settler allies with guilty consciences in the social-science fields of academia.
We can only hope the current government in BC gets voted out at the next election. It seems our leaders have gone insane.
People here in BC are totally fed up with government idiocy on the subject of natives.
Here is just a short addition from Germany:
All this bullshit is reminiscent of the – fortunately bygone – days of the GDR: in addition to subject-specific teaching, a degree course included compulsory Marxist-Leninist basic training.
Marxism/Leninism was also tested in the final examination, regardless of the subject.
The scientific education at GDR universities was of a high standard,
but most graduates hated the M/L courses, but you had to endure them because political unreliability could mean the end of your studies.
I was just thinking, along similar lines, that all of this stuff is reminiscent of the days when the study of dialectical materialism and Marxist-Leninist thought was compulsory in Soviet universities.
“[A]s I’ve discussed ad infinitum, MM is more than just “knowledge”: it includes superstition, mythology, religion, guidelines for behavior, morality, and traditions handed down by word of mouth. If you consider such stuff “knowledge”, then there are a gazillion competing and conflicting “knowledge systems” in the world, each corresponding to the views of indigenous people in a different area. But of course there is only one form of modern science. Chemistry, for example is understood and practiced the same way by chemists throughout the world.” – J. Coyne
If one accepts the following definition of “knowledge”, then MM is a knowledge system simply by being one “collectively accepted system of belief” among others.
“We refer to any collectively accepted system of belief as ‘knowledge’. Philosophers usually adopt a different terminological convention confining ‘knowledge’ to justified true belief.”
(Barnes, Barry, & David Bloor. “Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge.” In Rationality and Relativism, edited by Martin Hollis & Steven Lukes, 21-47. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. p. 22n5)
I’ve been following YouTube lectures by a geology professor named Nick Zentner from Central Washington University. He is an educator who helps the general public understand the geology and geologic history of the Pacific NW. He features a number of field trips with Randy Lewis, a member of the Wenatchi peoples. Listening to Randy’s origin stories for various geologic formations juxtaposed with Nick’s explanations of how geologists understand the same rock and landscape formations is fascinating. Randy also helps his audience understand how he and his ancestors came by various pieces of knowledge. It isn’t modern science but it is valuable, interesting, the way knowledge was discovered and transmitted for hundreds of thousands of years, and distinct from the way STEM oriented knowledge is analyzed and disseminated today.
A person by the name of Razib Kahn has coined the phrase “Left Creationism”. “Left Creationism” is “only” the dominant ideology of the elite.
The course’s obsession with an 1840 treaty is highly appropriate, in three different respects. (1) A treaty between governmental entities deals with POWER, and post-colonial theory teaches us that EVERYTHING is a matter of power. (2) One party to the Treaty was Maori, so indigenes are present equally in the document; in contrast, founding scientific documents (e.g., those of Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell, Dalton, Darwin, Mendel, Pasteur, Watson and Crick, etc. ) do not include any indigenes as either authors or as subjects, thus “marginalizing” indigenous outlooks; hence, focusing all attention on the Treaty rather than anything in science is DECOLONIALIZING. (3) The treaty may have no relation at all to the natural world (the subject of science) but, most important of all, it is a TEXT—and texts are what postmodernism teaches us to focus on. Our host hit the nail on the head with this observation: “This of course comes from postmodernism, which denies the existence of objective knowledge”.
Some phrases in the syllabus resemble those used in postmodernist “Sociology of Science” courses, for example: “norms around the communication of knowledge are an integral part of any knowledge system”. Come to think of it,
I wonder whether the syllabus was cooked up mostly by “allies” of MM who are
graduates of postmodernism programs, probably in the UK, Canada, or the US.
Do we have any information on the authors of the syllabus?
Just call Mātauranga Māori what it is – folklore. It doesn’t sound so impressive when you describe it as folklore.
I’m not a great believer in duelling dictionaries, but from the American Heritage dictionary:
folklore /fōk′lôr″/
noun
* The traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally.
* The comparative study of folk knowledge and culture.
* A body of widely accepted but usually specious notions about a place, a group, or an institution
Not on the same footing as science at all.