New Zealand Science Review - Mātauranga Māori issue

The New Zealand Science Review journal has published a special issue featuring Mātauranga and Science in practice. Here is a link to the issue. This is the first of two issues to be published and after reading most of the articles in the first issue, I am looking forward to the second installment. I was particularly captured by the article Mātauranga and Pūtaiao: the question of ‘Māori' science’ by Georgina Stewart. She discussed cases for and against there being such thing as Māori Science and comes to a suggested conclusion about it. She suggests that rather than western science being a separate system to Māori science as you might describe with a Venn diagram, that Māori science sits in a wider super-set circle with western science as a smaller subset circle inside it. This is because she sees Māori science as containing all the knowledge and attributes of western science plus other knowledge and attributes unique to Māori science. In conclusion, Georgina doesn’t definitively state that there is or isn’t such a thing as Māori science; she says it’s a “nexus of semantic, philosophical and political arguments, rather than a yes-no question”. Instead she comments about making sure we don’t ‘miss the educational opportunity and gift presented by the provocative concept of ‘Māori science’” (p68).

This collection of articles in the New Zealand Science Review was bought to my attention in the same week as the Ministry of Education published its first draft for Level 1 NCEA science and so it was Georgina’s last comment in her paper that rung in my mind as I read the NCEA Level 1 science document…don't miss the educational opportunity. The review document was bold in its statements on having Mātauranga Māori prominent in the learning matrix of science. This was definitely an educational opportunity. The NCEA document described Mātauranga Māori as a ‘distinctive body of knowledge and a means of knowledge generation from a Māori perspective’ and also has a whole section of the document dedicated to the relationship with te ao Māori. It says “The two world views and bodies of knowledge are separate and need to be considered separately.”

More recently, the New Zealand Science Educators’ Association (NZASE) published their latest newsletter and it contained a biographical article about Dr Ocean Mercier, and in the links at the end of the article was a link to her paper Indigenous knowledge and science. A new representation of the interface between indigenous and eurocentric ways of knowing. You can read it online here. In this chapter, Mercier talks about how indigenous knowledges are often not given credibility because they’re not presented in a western science format; that is they are oral histories, not written. She also talks about how history has affected the perception of Māori science with Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 making it illegal for anyone to practice within Māori science kaupapa and so consequently, indigenous peoples selective choose the knowledges they share with western science or keep within themselves. She offers a model of working at the interface of western and Māori science and knowledge where the interface is highlighted by common aspirations, shared benefits, trust, and mutual respect.

If I take all I have read so far and combined with all the conversations I have had with Māori scientists and educational colleagues, there seems to me to be a path forward for introducing a more prominent exploration of Mātauranga Māori within our science curriculum in Aotearoa. I like the interface model because it is something I can visualise and work with. Stewart’s article keeps me mindful that there is a lot of different perspectives and opinions about Māori science and so the local iwi of each school should be involved right from the beginning. One way of involving the local iwi was described to me in a metaphor. Put a stick in the ground as the place marking how the science curriculum might look in a school in the future and ask local iwi and kura whānau to help carve that stick, together with the school, right from the start.