University of Auckland set to make mandatory “indigeneity” courses optional, as students considered them a waste of time and money

As  I reported in September of last year, every entering student at New Zealand’s Auckland University was required to take an “indigeneity” course—and that includes prospective science majors. As I noted:

. . . . at the University of Auckland—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 (see screenshot below), which is required for all science majors. Click to access the course description, which I went through a while back (see the link above).

. . . . 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 gave some excerpts from the syllabus, which was designed to show students how sacred the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was, widely interpreted to deem all endeavors in New Zealand coequal between the “Crown” (Europeans) and the indigenous Māori.  This included science, so you could regard the course below, required for all science majors, as a way to propagandize them into thinking that indigenous “ways of knowing” were coequal to modern science.  But there was a similar required course for every major.

Unfortunately, this did not go down well: many of the students considered it a waste of time.  As one university member told me:

What we have been told is that the majority of students considered the courses below an acceptable standard, but it varied faculty by faculty. Remember that each faculty had its own WTR course. I know that in Engineering students overwhelmingly criticised their WTR course, but, ironically, this will continue as compulsory in 2026 as graduate competencies that are claimed to be covered by WTR are required for degree accreditation. I suspect however that the courses will be modified. We won’t know if WTR will be optional for the Faculty of Science in 2026, but most are assuming it will be, i.e. it won’t be compulsory next year.

For some reason, engineering and medicine students will still be required to take such a course, but, as a New Zealand Herald article (archived here) notes, the rest of these courses will be optional. Perhaps Māori students may take them, but the course offered was not a science course but a propaganda course, and why waste your time on such stuff when you can be learning science? (If you want to learn indigenous culture, anthropology or sociology courses are the proper venue.)

Dawn Freshwater, the Auckland Vice-Chancellor (i.e., “The Boss”) has been mentioned here before. She dissimulated several years ago, promising that there would be a full and fair debate on the relative merits and usefulness of modern science versus indigenous “ways of knowing”. But after four years, the debate still never took place. Freshwater clearly never had any intention of allowing it. And when I swallowed hard and emailed her about this, asking where the debate was, I got no answer. Fortunately for Auckland Uni, Freshwater has announced she’s leaving.

In the article below she backs off the program, recommending that the courses be optional instead of required. A faculty vote overwhelmingly supported this.

Click to read. (“Waipapa Taumata Rau” is Māori for “The University of Auckland,” recently given that indigenous name  (as my colleague said, “This was one of the problems with the whole thing: naming the course after the University indicated that the content reflected the views of the university.”)

Anyway, I’ll give a few excerpts:

Excerpts (go to the archived link to read full article):

The University of Auckland’s controversial Treaty of Waitangi and te ao Māori courses are unlikely to remain compulsory after negative feedback from staff and students, and criticism from politicians.

The university senate has recommended that Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) courses become an optional choice, rather than a core requirement.

The courses were made compulsory for all first-year students this year. The backdown comes after just one completed semester.

In March, Act leader David Seymour called on the university to scrap the compulsory courses, describing them as “a perversion of academic freedom” and “a form of indoctrination”.

“The university has been reviewing the feedback about the Waipapa Taumata Rau courses,” Auckland University Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater posted online on September 12.

Freshwater, as always, tried to put a good face on it, but the feedback was dire: students, even in engineering, considered the courses a waste of time.

“While students have found the courses valuable, they have also indicated where improvements could be made and told us they would like greater flexibility in how WTR fits within their programme of study,” she wrote.

English translation: “The reviews were lousy—so lousy that we have to make the courses optional so that students can take courses in their major lacking ideological propagandizing,”

“As we do with all courses, we aim to use staff and student feedback to strengthen how they are delivered.

“To that end, and in response to that feedback, a proposal will be discussed at Senate on 15 September recommending that WTR become an optional choice within General Education for most programmes, rather than a core requirement.

The faculty vote was very lopsided: make the courses optional.  Some student comments.

Comments online included: “From what I’m seeing, you either pay for this course or some other. You can debate whether another elective or transdisciplinary would be more useful than WTR.”

Another said: “This class is literally primary school-level content. I love the idea of a compulsory class on Te Tiriti, but obviously they failed at it. This class has been the biggest waste of my time, I learnt more in my Year 4 class.”

Some students said the course costs – between $900 and $1200 – were high and the courses had little relevance to their studies when compared to other general education courses.

The majority of comments were negative but not racist.

LOL. “Negative but not racist.”  That’s an escellent take on the “equal time” proposal. And those are the comments that Freshwater said “found the courses valuable.”  The woman doesn’t know how to give a straight answer.

Act’s tertiary education spokeswoman, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, said in March that international students were being forced to pay thousands of dollars for a course with little relevance to their future careers.

To sum up, the University’s efforts to shove the sacralization of indigenous people (and the treaty of Waitani) down the throats of students failed; the students want to learn stuff relevant to their interests, and are pretty clearly sick of the pervasive indigenization of New Zealand.  I find that good in the sense that while citizens of New Zealand Aoteoroa should know about their country’s history and culture, it should not be stuck everywhere in the curriculum.

Is this a harbinger of things to come? Perhaps in New Zealand, but certainly not in Canada, where the sacralization of the indigenous people is only getting started. Expect to see the “two-eyed seeing” trope everywhere.

Finally, I bid Dr. Freshwater goodbye and good riddance.  Her tenure served only to damage education at New Zealand’s most prestigious university.