On the surface, these are fights over curriculums, the borders of academic disciplines and how to allocate constrained research budgets. But there are deeper issues at play, writes Tama Nako*.
It appears a dramatic reversal is getting under way. Led by National Party minister of science Judith Collins, Cabinet is considering once-in-a-generation changes to the university and science sectors. MBIE says ministers are still considering the recommendations of two expert advisory groups chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, and no decisions have been made. These reforms may try to build a wall, separating mātauranga Māori from science, and marginalising Māori. But that depends on whether Winston Peters and others, claiming to follow in the footsteps of Sir Āpirana Ngata, follow through on that legacy and stop those walls being built.
The debate has heated up in recent years. On one side we hear that government recognition and funding for mātauranga Māori (or Māori knowledge) is too weak. The other side worries that any government support for mātauranga Māori is wasted, or that bringing mātauranga Māori alongside science damages research and education institutions. See, for example, “the Listener Seven”.
What we should ask is, why is Māori culture a political football again? It seems government recognition of indigenous knowledge and funding for indigenous research hasn’t proved insurmountable for other countries, including the United States federal government.
On the surface, these are fights over curriculums, the borders of academic disciplines and how to allocate constrained research budgets. But there are deeper issues at play about identity, technology and economic development. And the reversal under way by the National-led government is broader than it looks at first glance. It has implications for mātauranga Māori in other areas like the health system and resource management.
An interaction in June between Labour MP Willie Jackson and Collins was a sign of the tide shifting. In 2007, then National Party science minister Wayne Mapp released the Vision Mātauranga Policy, which described how government could guide the science and research sector to develop and use mātauranga Māori for the benefit of New Zealand.
The crux of the Jackson-Collins interaction, during a hearing of the Select Committee for Economic Development, Science and Innovation, was whether Collins wanted to define and curtail what was done with mātauranga Māori in research institutions. She said some scientists had complained they were being pressured to shoehorn irrelevant material into their application to win science grants. Jackson’s counterpoint was that the data from MBIE showed there had been minimal investment in Māori research, and something needed to be done about that.
Jackson wondered if Collins’ position would be a retreat from the bipartisan status quo established by Mapp. In reply, after a deep sigh, Collins said, “Dr Wayne Mapp hasn’t been the minister for science in a very long time.”
A retreat from Vision Mātauranga should ring alarm bells. Like many things in New Zealand politics, you can draw a direct line from the Ōrewa speech to the policy. In that speech, then National leader Don Brash stoked racism to win votes. He didn’t win that election but did spark charged debates, as he continues to do via Hobson’s Pledge. Without that speech, many policies that support Māori aspirations would today be stronger. The author of Vision Mātauranga, Charles Royal, has said the policy would have been more ambitious about mātauranga Māori, for the benefit of Māori, had it not been for sensitivities after Ōrewa. You could say that Vision Mātauranga would not have been so mild and Pākehā-centric. It could have been about justice and self-determination, giving space and fair resources to explore alternative forms of knowledge production, rather than about what the country can reap from Māori. Now, in the new government’s coalition agreements, we hear the echo of Ōrewa in calls for policy to be based on “need not race”.
Why do we seem to be heading back to the past? The debate over mātauranga Māori is camouflage for two deeper issues.
Firstly, Pākehā, fretting over the classist and imperialist heritage they bring from Europe, sometimes attempt to appropriate mātauranga Māori in artificial efforts to make a national identity. This creates tension for Māori, who are rightfully cautious of protecting their taonga, and tension for those who want to diminish Māori in the national mainstream.
Secondly, in Māoridom, discussions about the survival and prosperity of Māori have always raised conflicting opinions on mātauranga Māori, over what it means to be Māori and what kind of future we as Māori want. You can see the battle lines in kōrero in and out of parliament, going back to the beginning of European settlement.
New Zealand First claims the prestige of carrying forward the legacies of Māori MPs from those debates, like Sir Āpirana Ngāta, Sir Peter Buck, Sir Māui Pōmare and Sir James Carroll. Hansard shows several citations of Ngata by Peters so far in 2024. Matua Peters often cites these names of a hundred years ago, assuming his listeners automatically get his meaning. But not even Peters’ voters have been alive that long, and the topic may not be well known to younger New Zealanders.
Ngata and his contemporaries had a lot to say about the meeting of mātauranga Māori and western knowledge. Ngata commented at length on the journey for Māori to engage in the global economy while retaining mātauranga Māori, and he predicted a future with two intertwined cultures in one society. One of his metaphors was the fishing net – the challenge he set for future generations of Māori was to cast their net in the space between, the fishing grounds where the two cultures overlapped.
Ngata’s legacy is disputed for several reasons, but certainly he made efforts to protect Māori culture, while promoting new economic models for rural Māori communities. The challenge in Ngata’s time was the survival of the people, how to harness the changing technological arrangements, and if a sustainable new Māoriness could be marked out. There was a wider world pushing in at the door, a violent flood of people, goods and capital. Most of all, of ideas and technologies.
These efforts would be entirely overcome by the blunt push and pull of land confiscation and urbanisation. And, ultimately, the rural sector alone could not support the rapidly rising material aspirations connected to urban living and labour market demands. (This dynamic is well canvassed by Brian Easton in his economic history Not in Narrow Seas.)
But it is worth recalling that Ngata presented a middle ground. On one hand, there were voices (including some Māori MPs) who thought it was inevitable that Māori would assimilate, to become one culture in one society. And on the other hand, those closer to the Kiingitanga and Rātana emphasised a stronger vision of tino rangatiratanga. They were more inclined to hope for something like two societies, or spheres of power, for two cultures.
Then, as now, the flash points of debate are in education and science. They have big implications for wellbeing, identity and community. The problems for Māori of Ngata’s time, of grappling with western medicine and farming practices, present similar tensions and opportunities as today with artificial intelligence and gene technology.
Winston Peters and Shane Jones can claim to continue Ngata’s legacy, but does that include Ngata’s call to cast the net between, but not to cast away Māoriness? Their opposition in parliament, like Te Pāti Māori, may have a stronger claim to represent what Māori communities now want, mana motuhake, after the Crown has continually shown the hollow promise of paternalistic partnership.
The key question is, what direction will the coalition government take? It can choose to continue existing policies, like Vision Mātauranga, that recognise a plurality of knowledge systems, with mātauranga Māori thriving where practitioners with lived experience are inclined to take it. Or, if the government wants to mark a new path, to invest more in mātauranga Māori.
Any policy that touches on mātauranga Māori deserves great caution. Endless dog whistles will weaken our commitment to respecting different ways of thinking and being. If we have that respect, we have a sounder sense of our shared history, and can face hard decisions without fraying. In other words, imbued with momentum and direction, kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua – to walk backwards into the future with eyes to the past.
* Tama Nako is a pseudonym