Category: New Zealand

Māori reject a giant New Zealand ocean sanctuary proposed by the government

June 18, 2023 • 11:10 am

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 treaty, whose interpretation is in parts ambiguous (partly because there’s an English and Māori version that aren’t 100% interchangeable), nevertheless has three provisions that are clear. Here’s how Wikipedia describes them.

  • Article one of the Māori text grants governance rights to the Crown while the English text cedes “all rights and powers of sovereignty” to the Crown.
  • Article two of the Māori text establishes that Māori will retain full chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures while the English text establishes the continued ownership of the Māori over their lands and establishes the exclusive right of pre-emption of the Crown.
  • Article three gives Māori people full rights and protections as British subjects.

In general, while making Māori subject to British governance, then, it also grants them rights over their land and property and civil rights equal to those of the British subjects in New Zealand.

This last part, the “full rights and protections”, is the part that’s at issue today, for it’s being seen as granting Māori not just legal or moral rights identical to that of “Europeans,” but giving them equal access to and resources of science and natural resources.  I’ve written many times, for example, how the Māori and their supporters are insisting that Maori “ways of knowing” (“Mātauranga Māori”, or MM), be taught as coequal to modern science in school science classes, even though MM has only a small bit of empirical practical knowledge, and largely comprises myth, legend, morality, customs, and religion.

And so it goes with other subjects. The Treaty is interpreted as meaning that Māori get equal say in what kind of science will be done and should get as much money as non-Māori for science projects, even though the people with some or mostly indigenous heritage make up only about 17% of the population. Further, to extend the Treaty to the idea of “equal teaching of science” or “equal grant funding” forces it apply to realms that weren’t even in existence in 1840.

A lot of the fighting about applying the Treaty involves who gets the power to run New Zealand, and because the indigenous people are seen as oppressed “people of color”, there is little pushback to their claims. Teachers objecting to MM being taught in science class, for example, risk their jobs. The epithet of “racism” chills all discourse about how to deal with Māori claims; the group truly has, in New Zealand, what’s been called “the authority of the sacred victim”.

A recent and prime example of misapplication of the Treaty (and of fishing rights negotiated between Māori and the “Crown”), is the overturning of a huge and essential ocean sanctuary proposed and approved by the New Zealand government. Now this sanctuary will not be created because the iwi not only claim fishing rights (which are meager: about $100,000 U.S. per year), but want majority or even full power over the governance of this sanctuary.

What I’ll report here is what I’ve gleaned from several articles, the main ones being below (click to read).

The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, discussed in Parliament since about 2015 (and heavily promoted by former PM Jacinda Ardern), is a proposed 620,000 km² (about 240,000 mi²) sanctuary extending far around New Zealand’s largely uninhabited Kermadec Islands, shown below. The archipelago is located about 1000 km (600 miles) northeast of New Zealand’s North Island, and the islands are where the red marker is:

 

Here’s a pdf of the 17-page proposal from the Minister of the Environment about establishing the Kermadec Sanctuary; and a pdf of the bill is here.

The sanctuary is being established to enlarge by nearly 100-fold the existing Kermadec Marine Reserve, and, at twice the size of New Zealand, would be one of the world’s largest marine reserves. As the Kiwi site Stuff notes:

It supports life not found anywhere else on the planet: home to 431 fish species, six million seabirds, three types of endangered sea turtles, and more than 250 species of coral and aquatic invertebrates.

It is geologically significant, with the world’s longest chain of submerged volcanoes and the second-deepest ocean trench, plunging to depths of 10km – deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

Remote and largely uninhabited, most will never get the chance to visit this subtropic island arc, around 1000 km north-east of the North Island. And that’s what makes it so special – for millennia, it has thrived untouched by human activity.

The Sanctuary is seen as helping fulfill a UN program to protect more of the oceans (one reason being their value as a buffer to climate change). If established, this reserve would, together with ones established by the US, UK, and Australia, protect 3.5 million km² of ocean.

But the Kermadec Sanctuary is not going to happen. Why? Because the Māori commercial fishing interests voiced opposition, and the iwi voted almost unanimously to reject the proposal. Since their assent is essential, the sanctuary is an ex-sanctuary, singing with the Choir Invisible.

The pathetic thing about this objection is that “the Māori commercial fishing interests” are almost nil given that the sanctuary is so far away from the mainland.

[The iwi] argued Māori would no longer be able to source commercial quota from that area. (Officials calculated the catch was small – about 20 tonnes, worth roughly $165,000 a year.) Believing this would override fishing rights enshrined in the ‘Sealord Deal’ – a 1992 commercial fisheries settlement – Māori fisheries trust Te Ohu Kaimoana (TOKM) took legal action.

I’m assuming those are New Zealand dollars since this is a New Zealand site, so the value of the catch is about $102,000 US per year. And THAT is preventing this sanctuary from coming into being? Hell, the government could pay it off easily, and in fact they offered to do so, along with other concessions to the Māori. When it became clear that the Māori weren’t keen on an earlier proposal, the government’s Environment Minister David Parker put this on the table:

Parker, who had hoped to get it over the line before the election, said he had been working on the revised proposal since 2017 to try to get the sanctuary established. His changes included renaming the sanctuary the Ngā Whatu-a-Māui Ocean Sanctuary and setting up a co-governance entity Te Kāhui to manage it. Te Kāhui was to get a $40 million research fund to do that.

The proposed legislation also required it be managed in a way that recognised Māori rights and interests. Te Kāhui was also to be tasked with considering whether the sanctuary could be given legal personhood, as happened with the Whānganui River. It also allowed for a review of the fishing total allowable catch in 10 years’ time, and rights to compensation.

Te Kāhui would consist of four government ministers, four Te Ohu Kaimoana representatives and one representative each for Te Aupōuri and Ngāti Kuri – mana whenua in the area.

You can’t come up with a better deal than that: a cool 40 million in research, co-governance between the “Crown” (the government) and the Māori, renaming the sanctuary, management recognizing Māori rights and interests, and a council with 60% Māori members. Did that fly?

No. The Māori want more. As they made clear, they are “the original conservationists” and don’t want to share any control by the UN or the New Zealand government:

Peter-Lucas Jones of Te Aupōuri said it was never going to support what was proposed – because of the impact on rights and the structure of the proposal.

“We were never going to agree to the Crown extinguishing our indigenous rights and interests in the moana [area of water] that has been identified for the sanctuary.

“[However], we are the original conservationists and we want to see more happen in that space in the interests of the future of our mokopuna [descendants]. But we want to lead that, not be added onto somebody’s relationship strategy with Unesco and the Americans. We want to be part of an idea that looks much further into the future than the next 20 years.”

Parker said iwi had indicated they were not interested in compensation, but the Government had been clear it was willing to consider compensation for fishing rights that would be suspended, saying the cost would be modest because little commercial fishing took place in the area concerned due to its remoteness.

It seems clear that this is not about money or commercial fishing at all; it is a gesture by the Māori to show that, as “the original conservationists” (who killed all the moa and burnt a huge section of the islands), they aren’t getting enough power. They want to LEAD the project, not just be one of a team that include the UN and the NZ government, not to mention the horrible Americans.

This is what conferring authority on a “sacred victim” yields: a huge amount of protection to a fragile ocean environment must give way so that the iwi of the Māori can have power and respect. They don’t want to just be on a team, they want to RUN the team, and in a way beneficial to future Māori.  (As the old saying goes, though, “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’.”)  That is a selfish inversion of priorities that can endanger not just marine life, but the whole planet.

As usual, I got this tip from an anonymous Kiwi scientist who is angry not just at what happened, but at the fact that other Kiwi scientists aren’t objecting to the unconscionable usurpation of power based on the “sacred victim” narrative. As the scientist told me:

I don’t know why iwi rejected it, but it looks as if the iwi want to control the whole process. What interested me was the lack of comment from marine conservationists. Normally when an MPA [“Marine Protected Area”] proposal is rejected there is a lot of protest. This time – crickets.
This lack of protest, of course, is because those who object to the Māori’s demands will be called racists.

New Zealand’s educational decline

June 16, 2023 • 9:15 am

I’ve written before about how poorly New Zealand is doing, relative to similar countries, in educating its children, but I didn’t know how poorly until a Kiwi sent me this article from the think tank The New Zealand Initiative.  The author, Roger Partridge, not only gives the depressing data, but also focuses on problem: the government’s “child-centered approach” to teaching.

By the way, I get a lot of these articles from different New Zealand residents, all of whom want me to write about the problems of their country but are too afraid—and rightly so—to give their names. So these are all from anonymous sources.

Click to read:

The data from 2020 (my bolding)

The rise of automation, artificial intelligence and pressures from developing economies are threatening low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Never has the need for school leavers to be well-educated been more important than today.

Yet something is rotten at the core of New Zealand’s education system. A growing proportion of children leave school unable to read an instruction manual or do basic maths. Over the last twenty years, our education system has slipped from being the envy of the world to barely mediocre.

Kiwi students once ranked near the top of international education league tables. In the latest results from the highly rated Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study, Year 5 students placed last among all English-speaking countries and 24th out of all 26 participating OECD countries. Students suffered similar slides in maths and science.

The New Zealand education system is also now one of the most unequal in the world. The gap between the educational “haves” and “have nots” eclipses all our English-speaking OECD peers. All this, despite Government spending per child increasing in real terms by more than 30% since 2001.

Here are data from 2022 given by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution: (my bolding)

Low attendance at school is another sign the country’s education system is slipping with children from lower socio-economic areas the worst affected, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative says.

The New Zealand Initiative is a think tank which carries out research to help New Zealand plan for the future.

It has commented on new research by the Education Review Office that shows children are missing school more in New Zealand than other English-speaking countries.

The office found four in ten parents were comfortable with their child missing a week or more of school per term and a third of students did not see going to school every day as that important…

The education system had been declining for 25 years and data backed up his view, such as the Pisa study carried out by the OECD. As an example, in maths the knowledge of a 15-year-old New Zealand student equated to a student aged 13 and a half 20 years ago.

. . . . In the past 12-18 years, New Zealand’s scores had declined by 23 points for reading, 22 points for science and 29 points for maths. The OECD estimated that 30 points was equivalent to one-year of learning.

Here are the 2019 attendance data from that link above, showing the proportion of students in different Anglophone countries that attend school regularly (regular attendance “is defined as attending more than 90 percent of the time). New Zealand’s 2021 figure went up just 2%—to 60%.

Now what’s the reason for such a decline in both educational attainment and attendance? (Surely they are connected!) While a University of Auckland analysis of the slip in literacy produces only a bunch of waffling, including obsession with the Internet (something that of course also dogs competing countries), Partridge blames New Zealand’s philosophy of education (my bolding):

In her new book, my New Zealand Initiative colleague Briar Lipson exposes how pseudo-scientific dogmas have enveloped our education system. The book New Zealand’s education delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system is a startling dissection of the perils of the so-called child-centred approach forced onto schools by official curriculum and assessment policy.

Gone are the days when teachers followed a national, knowledge-based curriculum, ensuring all children are exposed to the same knowledge in core academic subjects like English, maths, science and social studies. Instead, the much-vaunted New Zealand Curriculum is a scant 67 pages long. The entire curriculum for social science (including history, social studies, geography, economics and politics) for Years 1-13 fits on a single A4 page.

How much children learn about the world around them is left to the discretion of the individual school, teacher and, increasingly, child. Instead of knowledge, children are to develop “competencies” like problem-solving and critical thinking, commonly described as “21st century skills.” (Goodness knows how any leader managed when they were educated in the 20th century.)

Some schools have continued with a more traditional, knowledge rich curriculum. This is especially true of schools that have opted out of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in favour of international examination systems like Cambridge or International Baccalaureate. But in state schools, New Zealand Curriculum’s extreme child-centred approach prevails.

The problems with a child-centred approach are obvious. Or they are to almost everyone except those responsible for the education system. If the content of classroom study must “relate to the child,” students may learn little about the world outside their family or surroundings. This risk will be greatest for children whose home life involves neither books nor quality time engaging with adult family members.

Partridge also notes that the educational deficit is, as expected, larger in “vulnerable” communities. I’m not sure if this is a euphemism for communities comprising more indigenous (Māori) inhabitants, but statistics do show that the child poverty level is palpably higher in Māori children than the average child in New Zealand (and that of course means that the disparity between Māori and European descendants is even higher). Partridge continues:

In New Zealand’s Education Delusion, Lipson argues that the solution to these education woes is to strengthen the role of knowledge in the New Zealand Curriculum.

Drawing on both empirical research and cognitive science, Lipson shows that the New Zealand Curriculum’s approach has things backwards. Knowledge is a pre-requisite for all competencies, from reading comprehension to creativity and problem-solving (try fixing an engine without knowing how it works). Lipson’s research also demonstrates that direct instruction by teachers is the best route to gain that knowledge.

Taking on the education establishment is not for the faint-hearted. The Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Council for Education Research and the teachers’ unions are well-organised. They (mostly) sing from the same song sheet and defend their beliefs with a religious fervour. And were it not for international data, it would be almost impossible even to identify New Zealand’s downward trajectory and grave inequities.

That song sheet, by the way, includes the famous tune, “All Ways of Knowing Are the Sa,me/The Lord God Made Them All.”

I’m not going to weigh in on how to fix this problem: it’s enough to recognize that it exists and it is severe. What I will say is that the government of one of my favorite countries is doing precious little to fix it; in fact, it’s exacerbating it in two  ways.

First, if a “child-centered” curriculum involves enhancing children’s local knowledge at the expense of general or worldwide knowledge, it’s parochial.  And surely giving indigenous “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori or MM) equal billing with the “ways of knowing” taught in comparable OECD countries will not help literacy, science, or math—the three areas in which NZ is especially behind. By making itself more parochial, and sacralizing the indigenous people, the NZ government and educational establishment will only guarantee that they continue to drop to the bottom.

Further, the constant sacralizing of the indigenous language won’t help with literacy either, particularly compared to other Anglophone nations.It’s nice that Crown people can speak some Māori words, but local language is dominating to the point where foreigners can’t read a lot of stuff supposedly written in English.

Second, by chilling speech around these issues (as I said, most Kiwis who write me don’t want their names used), the government can go ahead and do what it wants without getting any pushback. What I predict will happen is that well-off Kiwis will increasingly put their children in private and independent schools having more rigorous curricula. That will, of course, only enhance the disparities in education between rich and poor, and make state-run schools much worse than private ones. It will also enhance general inequality.

Education, along with many other aspects of NZ’s national welfare, are being held hostage by fealty to beliefs and demands of the Māori , people who most need the benefit of better education. But nobody dare mention the likely effects of indigenizing or “decolonizing” national education.

I see no way to stop this, particularly because those in higher education and the government must hold to their virtue by adhering to the ambiguous 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the basis for claims that everything Māori, including science, must get attention and money equal to those given matters of the “crown”, as Europeans are called. It’s sad to watch the self-destruction of this country, but the greatest dissolution is down the road, when undereducated Kiwi children grow up and run the country.

The indigenization of New Zealand’s Space Policy

June 4, 2023 • 1:00 pm

The other day I forgot to mention that New Zealand has a “National Space Policy” that you can read about here.  Here’s an excerpt from the brief announcement:

The next ‘giant leap’ in New Zealand’s space journey has been taken today with the launch of the National Space Policy, Economic Development Minister Barbara Edmonds announced.

. . . “With the launch of our National Space Policy, we’re presenting a clear and connected picture of New Zealand’s space interests to the world.

“The policy identifies stewardship, innovation, responsibility, and partnership as key values for New Zealand in space. Harnessing these values will inform space-related engagements, policy creation and strategies across government.

The National Space Policy is led by robust objectives of:

  • Growing an innovative and inclusive space sector
  • Protecting and advancing our national security and economic interests
  • Regulating to ensure space activities are safe and secure
  • Promoting the responsible use of space internationally
  • Modelling sustainable space and Earth environments

“This is an important milestone in our space journey as it provides an overview of New Zealand’s values and objectives to guide future space-related policies and regulation.

“This is an ongoing conversation. We will continue to engage with stakeholders and industry,

That sounds good unless you’ve been immersed in New Zealand’s politically correct efforts to indigenize science. This is ultimately based on the view that the indigenous people (Māori) are entitled, via the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (“Te Teriti”) to coequal participation in science, not just as workers but also entitled to teach their traditional lore, Mātauranga Māori (MM), as coequal in schools to what they call “Western science”.  There is some empirical knowledge in MM, but also a heap of legend, oral tradition, religion, morality, and rules for life. MM, on the whole, is not equivalent to science, but contains science, just as the Bible contains some real history. Yet the interpretation of the Treaty as making all things Māori almost sacred is holding back science in a big way.  So the words “stewardship” and “stakeholders” are, to me at least, code words that this endeavor too will be “decolonized.”

I’ve seen little analysis of the Treaty vis-à-vis education, but it needs to be discussed. The English and Māori versions differ, not all Māori chiefs signed it, and it’s an agreement, not a constitution. Basically, it guarantees the Māori the rights to keep and hold their land, gives Britain sovereignty over the country, but also guarantees that all Māori have full rights as British subjects. Here’s the important part: Article 3 of 3 (English translation on a NZ government site):

In consideration thereof Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not clear to me how the “rights and privileges” of British subjects guarantees the Māori the right to have their “way of knowing” taught in government-run science classes. But of course even debating that issue is taboo in New Zealand. (As always, I think MM is an important part of local culture that should be taught as sociology, anthropology, or even religion, but not as science.)

But I have digressed big time. In the link above is another link to the whole government space policy, which is here.

And here’s the interesting bit:

Obligations which apply to all New Zealand space policies

All space policies must also be consistent with New Zealand’s existing commitments, including. . .

  • Te Tiriti o Waitangi: a commitment between the Crown and Māori which provides the basis for ongoing partnerships between the government and Māori on space, including on the implementation of these values and objectives. The Crown is committed to recognising and reflecting Māori interests, including those embodied in the Treaty principles of partnership, active protection, and participation.

Modelling sustainable space and Earth environments

Encouraging inclusive, sustainable space collaborations within New Zealand

Mātauranga Māori and space are deeply connected, with space representing whakapapa (genealogical links to the beginning of the universe), wairuatanga (the spiritual connection between Earth and the universe, derived from Māori cosmology), and tātai arorangi (Māori knowledge of astronomy). The New Zealand government encourages inclusive collaborations with individuals or groups who are currently underrepresented in the space sector (including, but not limited to, Māori); and for these collaborations to work toward sustainable outcomes. The New Zealand government will also strive to further understand and assess representation across the space sector, to best direct inclusive collaboration opportunities.

The treaty is quoted again, and this means that not only will equity apply to the whole policy, but indigenous people will get piles of money to give their take on the policy. More distressing is the dissimulation of the last paragraph, which simply lies when it says that “Mātauranga Māori and space are deeply connected”.  What they’ve done here, as usual, is make an analogy between science (space exploration) and aspects of Māori society that have almost nothing to do with space (whakapapa and wiruatanga are spiritual and moral concepts). The one exception, tātai arorangi, involved learning enough about the positions of celestial bodies to navigate across the south Pacific and, later, judge the seasons for planting or hunting.  But the space bit of MM is no longer a pressing concern to anybody in the country except those whose ancestry may help them get jobs or money.

This is from a discussion of the subject by two academics:

David Perenara-O’Connell

Māngai, Tāwhaki Joint Venture

The knowledge is very clear with regard to how our people came to be here, and that it wasn’t by mistake, and it was through a deep understanding of the stars and the Sun and the Moon and the weather and the birds – all of those things that they were able to harness to get from one place to the next without necessarily knowing where that next place was.

For us at Taumutu and Wairewa – Ngāi Tahu hapū – we are inherently eeling, fishing villages, so we spend a lot of time at night out gathering our kai, and through that, the importance of the Moon, the time of the year when we gather the tuna, which we call the hinapōuri, the time of the dark nights through to the timing of the sky and the constellations that guide us in those mahinga kai activities.

So when you’re gathering tuna on the banks of the river or on the gravels of Kaitōrete with your tamariki and your kaumātua, there’s an exchange of that knowledge about the stars constantly moving overhead.

In the following, “kūmara” is a Polynesian type of sweet potato. Bolding in the text is mine.

Dr Pauline Harris

For Māori, a lot of our knowledge is passed on through word of mouth, but there’s lots of different forms for that. All sorts of information is carried in things like our pūrākau, our stories, our waiata, our songs, our whakataukī. They all carry messages, knowledge, history, information, data.

I’d like to use the example Whānui. Whānui is a star called Vega. Whānui was the father of the kūmara. And his wife and him had these kūmara children, and his brother Rongo-maui wanted to bring the kūmara to Earth. And so he went up there and he asked for the kūmara. Whānui said, “No you can’t have that. You’re not allowed to take my children.” And Rongo-maui stole the children and brought them down to Earth. Whānui was very angry with the fact that his children were taken, and he sent down his other children, which were like caterpillars and stuff, and they were sent down to Earth to destroy the crops of the kūmara so that they couldn’t use them.

There’s lots of different messages in there. There’s messages around the wrongdoing of stealing things but also about the relationship between kūmara and the star Vega or Whānui itself. And when that star rises, it indicates the time of the year, around about March, which is when you have some practice associated with the kūmara.

You can be the judge of whether this knowledge, which was indeed of use to the Polynesian ancestors of the Māori as well as to the early Māori themselves, should now also be deeply integrated into modern space exploration and the policy that guides it.

Some correspondence and a statement from from the Royal Society of New Zealand about “ways of knowing” and cancellation

December 22, 2021 • 9:30 am

Here’s a bit more (and I’m not done yet) about the fight to teach valid science in New Zealand rather than teach valid science in science class as coequal with indigenous “ways of knowing.”

The Royal Society of New Zealand has the formal name “Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi”, with the last two words being Māori for “group of experts”. But I’ll just call it the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), for its legal name remains “Royal Society of New Zealand”). It is the Kiwi version of London’s Royal Society (abbreviated RS), and is a group of elite scholars chosen for their accomplishments.  It gives out grants, publishes its own journal, holds meetings, promotes science and technology and, like the RS or the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, provides advice to their government. All of its activities are, by statute, limited to science and technology.

A short reprise. A while back a group of 7 scholars from the University of Auckland wrote a letter, “In defense of science”, published in a weekly NZ magazine called The Listener. You can see the letter here (read it again if you will, as it’s short). It’s largely a critique of the Kiwi initiative (fostered by the Government, by universities, and by many NZ academics) to have complete parity of teaching in science courses modern science with Māori “ways of knowing”, or mātauranga Māori (MM for short), literally “Maori knowledge”. While asserting that it was valuable to teach MM in school for cultural and historical reasons, these seven scholars (one a Māori) objected to teaching what is a gemisch of practical knowledge (sometimes gained empirically), mythology, morality, philosophy, and legend alongside modern science in science class.

Regardless of its intention to “empower” the Māori, the effect of teaching MM alongside real science would be to confuse everybody and wind up lowering the level of science in New Zealand, which has been dropping in international rankings for math, science, and reading scores for over two decades, and every academic in New Zealand knows this. (I’ll give more data on this in a future post.) Yet the RSNZ criticized the seven signers of the letter and, supposedly after a complaint, began investigating the two living members, Robert Nola and Garth Cooper, a Māori (another signer has died).  This investigation that could result in these two distinguished members being booted out of the RSNZ—just for exercising free speech!

Here’s the statement issued in July by the RSNZ (click on screenshot to see it in situ:

I found the statement ridiculous, coming from an institution with the mission of promoting science. It explicitly argues that MM is a “valid truth” (wrong: for one thing, it’s creationist in its view of life and the universe), but also criticizes the seven people, including three RSNZ members, who signed the Listener letter. This is a chilling of free speech; there should be no such public pronouncement by the RSNZ touting MM as “valid truth”, much less demonizing three of its members publicly.

I objected in an email to the Director of Advice and Practice of  RSNZ, which is below:

From: Jerry Coyne
Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2021 7:36 am
To: Roger Ridley
Subject: Booting signatories out of the Royal Society

Dear Dr. Ridley,

I understand from the news that New Zealand’s Royal Society is considering expelling two scientists for signing a letter objecting to teaching “indigenous” science alongside and coequal with modern science.  As a biologist who has done research for a lifetime and also spent time with biologists in New Zealand, I find this possibility deeply distressing.

The letter your two members wrote along with five others was defending modern science as a way of understanding the truth, and asserting that Maori “ways of knowing”, while they might be culturally and anthropologically valuable, should not be taught as if the two disciplines are equally useful in conveying the truth about our Universe. They are not. Maori science is a collation of mythology, religion, and legends which may contain some scientific truth, but to determine what bits exactly are true, those claims must be adjudicated by modern science: our only “true” way of knowing.

I presume you know that the Maori way of knowing includes creationism: the kind of creationism that fundamentalist Christians espouse in the U.S. based on a literalistic reading of the Bible. Both American and Maori creationism are dead wrong—refuted by all the facts of biology, paleontology, embryology, biogeography, and so on. That your society would expel members for defending views like evolution against non-empirically based views of creation and the like, is shameful.

I hope you will reconsider the movement to expel your two members, which, if done, would make the Royal Society of New Zealand a laughingstock.

Cordially,
Jerry Coyne
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ecology and Evolution
The University of Chicago
USA

Richard Dawkins also wrote to Roger Ridley, and you can see Richard’s letter here. I suspect he will get a very long response, for Dawkins’s email and his letter to “New Zealand friends of science and reason“, also published in The Listener, carry a lot of weight!  In response to the barrage of letters, articles, and newspaper articles about the RSNZ’s “investigation,” its chief executive, Paul Atkins, issued a weaselly statement saying the RSNZ was supporting both science and MM and was launching a new program “to deepen understanding of mātauranga”

[The RSNZ will launch] ‘Mātauranga Māori and its Interface with Science’, to be run through our expert advice function, co-led by Professor Rangi Matamua FRSNZ, School of Māori Knowledge Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, Massey University. The aim will be to further explore and deepen the Society’s, its members’ and hapori communities’ understanding of mātauranga and its relevance to science and vice versa. The work will seek input from a wide range of experts, networks and perspectives.

I suspect this is a put-up job which will tout all ways of knowing as coequal. I deeply doubt whether the RSNZ will say flatly that “MM is not, as a whole, science” and shouldn’t be taught as coequal to science, even though several Māori academics have said just that! But we shall see. Will they ask Drs. Nola and Cooper to speak, and even Richard Dawkins?

This morning I finally got a response from Ridley, below (I’ve redacted email addresses):

From: Roger Ridley
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 9:03 PM
To: Jerry Coyne
Subject: RE: Booting signatories out of the Royal Society

Dear Professor Coyne

Thank you for taking the time to write with your email and views, and apologies for the delay in replying – we have received a lot of traffic on this issue as I’m sure you will know. Please be assured that the Society supports the principles of freedom of speech.  For clarity, the Society itself has not brought any complaints against the authors of the Listener letter.  However, as a professional body, we have a complaints procedure that we are obliged to follow when we receive complaints about a member from another member or a member of the public. That process needs to run its course. Media speculation about the outcome, which could include setting the complaints aside, are completely premature.

On the question of the content of the letter that sparked reaction from various quarters, the Society’s view is that that the current situation is unhelpful to constructive dialogue, and we are therefore putting in place a work program intended to bring the discussion back onto a more helpful footing.

Best wishes for the festive season

Roger
Dr Roger Ridley
Mātanga Rangahau | Director Expert Advice and Practice
Royal Society Te Apārangi
11 Turnbull Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011
PO Box 598, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
ROYALSOCIETY.ORG.NZ

I’ve heard from one other reader who got a similar but shorter response; Ridley is not just sending out boilerplate responses, which is good.

However, his letter is still weaselly, and the reason why is detailed in the email I just sent him, which I’ve put below.

Dear Dr. Ridley,

Thanks very much for answering my email and clarifying that the RSNZ hasn’t itself brought any complaints against Dr. Nola and Cooper. But I don’t understand why your “complaints procedure” involves more than a very quick appraisal of the Listener letter and whatever “complaint” it produced.  Your members were exercising free speech in a magazine, and for that reason alone the complaint should be quickly dismissed. There is nothing difficult about this decision.

What bothers me more is that the RSNZ did indeed issue a public complaint about the letter, and implicitly about its signatories.  As you may recall, this is what that statement, signed by the then-President of the RSNZ as well as by the Chair of the Academy Executive Committee, said:

The recent suggestion by a group of University of Auckland academics that mātauranga Māori is not a valid truth is utterly rejected by Royal Society Te Apārangi. The Society strongly upholds the value of mātauranga Māori and rejects the narrow and outmoded definition of science outlined in The Listener – Letter to the Editor.

It deeply regrets the harm such a misguided view can cause.

If you consider that the “current situation is unhelpful to constructive dialogue”, then your own Society, and the statement above, is largely to blame. This investigation should “run its course” in about one day, and then you should apologize to Drs. Nola and and Cooper (as well as the other four living signers), and issue a public statement that they were exercising their free speech by voicing their opinion in a magazine.

The RSNZ, by trying to somehow harmonize modern science with mātauranga Māori, is not only engaged in a futile task, but also practicing a kind of social engineering with the aim of empowering an indigenous people. This kind of well-meant attempt to reconcile two incompatible “ways of knowing”— and to teach them in science class as both “valid truths”—will result only in a further decline in the quality of science and math education in New Zealand, which as you know has been dropping for over two decades in comparison with other countries.

I urge your Society to act sensibly and stop asserting that mātauranga Māori is a “valid truth”. Some of that endeavor does convey practical truths, but a lot of it doesn’t, comprising as it does mythology and legend.  Defending mātauranga Māori is not the same thing as defending science.

Cordially,
Jerry Coyne
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ecology & Evolution
The University of Chicago

If you want to write Ridley, email me and I’ll give you his email address.