Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
A Kiwi sent me this just-posted “Shape of Dialogue” video, which, although quite long for me (2 hours!), has an explanation of mātauranga Māori (MM) by a part-Māori scholar and musician, Charles Royal. Royal’s webpage shows that he’s not only an expert in “indigenous knowledge”, but also “Advise[s] and Lead[s] Projects and People, particularly to … Continue reading A Māori scholar/musician explains mātauranga Māori
I suspect the answer to the title question is “No way!”, but the incursion of Mātauranga Māori (“MM”, or Māori “ways of knowing”) into New Zealand’s science is reaching ludicrous depths. Even in the U.S.A. we don’t see headlines like the one below. (Note that “complement” is misspelled as “compliment”.) Why am I so sure … Continue reading Could Mātauranga Māori advance quantum physics?
Is it okay for oppressed minorities to evince blatantly racist attitudes, claiming, for example, that they are “genetically superior to other groups”? (Needless to say, the claim I’m discussing here is not backed by evidence.) I’d argue that no, dismissing entire groups as inferior based purely on stereotypes is wrong, whoever does it. But it’s … Continue reading Co-leader of N.Z.’s Māori Party claims that Māori are a genetically superior group
Judging from this video lecture and Q&A session below by a Māori climate scientist, the answer to the title question is “no”. A New Zealand biologist and teacher sent me the 46-minute video, angered at its intellectual vacuity, as you can detect from his/her email. (By the way, the scientists I quote are different people, … Continue reading Can mātauranga Māori help us understand climate change?
The other day I wrote about a Māori-themed school on New Zealand’s North Island whose curriculum was run by the phases of the moon—a school that seemed deeply steeped in astrology, and thus unlikely to provide anything more than a parochial and ethnic education to a class that was only 9% Māori, but whose educational … Continue reading The Guardian touts Māori ways of knowing as ways of science
The Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, the descendants of Polynesians who made it to the island in the 13th century. After conflict with the Europeans who arrived in the early 19th century, some (but not all) of the Māori tribes (“iwi”) signed the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (“te Tiriti o Waitangi”). That … Continue reading Māori reject a giant New Zealand ocean sanctuary proposed by the government
You may well recognize the name of Nick Matzke, as he was the former Public Information Project Director of the National Center for Science Education, wrote a lot of good anti-creationist material (including a debunking of the “irreducible complexity” of bacterial flagella as adduced by IDers), and played a major role in organizing the prosecution … Continue reading Nick Matzke on Mātauranga Māori vs. modern science
The kerfuffle continues about whether mātauranga Māori, or “Maori ways of knowing”, constitutes an independent form of science that should be taught in school science class as coequal to what we know as “real science”. As I’ve pointed out before, this coequality is simply ludicrous, for mātauranga Māori is a collection of religious beliefs, superstitions, … Continue reading Maori “ways of knowing” to be taught as science in NZ universities
Nothing better shows the kind of “knowledge” that promoters of New Zealand’s indigenous “ways of knowing” (mātauranga Māori ) want taught in science class than the claim that the Māori—or rather, their ancestral Polynesians—discovered Antarctica in the 7th century A.D. (The Māori could not have done it at that time since their East Polynesian ancestors … Continue reading Once again: did the Maori discover Antarctica?
As I’ve written many times, Mātauranga Māori (MM)—considered the “way of knowing” of the indigenous Māori, who arrived in what is now New Zealand from Polynesia in the 13th century—has been the subject of some kerfuffle in NZ. That’s because there’s a movement, promoted not just by the Māori but by many white “allies”, to … Continue reading Is Mātauranga Māori really a “way of knowing”?
