Dribbly native science from the MfE

Māori – Auckland Museum Online Store

Our atmosphere and climate 2020 (pdf, 8.74 MB)

The latest climate report from the Ministry for the Environment is quickly distracted.  The first page includes Maori creation myths that dismiss normal science. For a climate report, it’s preoccupied by spiritual speculations from unknown poets who laboured to describe the world with their eyes shut.

We know this sort of philosophical song-writing from the English tradition, though Christian stories make them more accessible than this. The waffle is deeply opaque when crafted in Maori that’s unintelligible to most of us, as surveys clearly show few speak it well. Continue Reading →

Visits: 16

Shocking racism, racial privilege our new normal

Some matters demand attention, no matter what important stuff one is already working on. Such is the case with Dr Muriel Newman’s Centre for Political Research, on this occasion turning up weighty issues of democracy, sovereignty and Maori political ambition. Muriel’s incisive article on the advance of Maori privilege under the Labour patronage is deeply disturbing and if we don’t pay it some attention our efforts for climate realism will seem as nothing. And who wants that?

Reposted from NZCPR Newsletter. Emphasis added.

In a speech in November 2000, the former Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange warned that if governments attempted to accommodate the increasingly audacious demands for sovereignty by the Maori tribal elite, they would end up threatening democracy itself.

“Democratic government can accommodate Maori political aspiration in many ways. It can allocate resources in ways which reflect the particular interests of Maori people. It can delegate authority, and allow the exercise of degrees of Maori autonomy. What it cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as it does that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have them both.Continue Reading →

Visits: 22

Key ‘culturally ignorant’ – next will be ‘denier’

Yesterday, on Marae Investigates, Mr Morgan was asked what he thought about Mr Key saying the King was wrong about Maori owning the water. He replied: “That once again says the Prime Minister is culturally ignorant, and that’s unfortunate.”

via King’s spokesman calls Key ‘culturally ignorant’ – NZ Herald News.

Next thing you know, they’ll be calling Key a “denier”. Then all who oppose them.

Visits: 345

King says Maoris have always owned water

His people believe him

Well of course they do.

via Maori have always owned water – 3 News.

Earlier today King Tuheitia told the national hui on the issue that Maori have always owned water.

The big chiefs and the long-time activists were at Turangawaewae to discuss one issue – water – and looking for one thing – unity.

So, King Tuheitia told the hui “we’ve always owned the water”; you’re quite sure that the hui didn’t tell him? Because I was under the firm impression that the purpose of a hui was to find the will of the people, not to announce it to them.

Just one question: why do Maoris say they own the water, when no other race on Earth believes that they do?

Do they know what water is?

water

Visits: 358

Maori for past or for present, for then or for now?

old maori village

From Owen McShane’s newsletter Straight Thinking comes his article The Reactionaries and the Modernists – Maori at the Cross Roads, published in the National Business Review (behind a paywall) on 22nd August.
 
Owen presents the choice between modernism and tribalism as being Maori’s to make, but the consequences equally punish or reward the rest of us. The infiltration of our public decision-making by regressive, animist religious practices impedes our development.

Maori have a choice

One road will take Maori into a future in which they participate in the modern world, contribute to economic growth and development, and contribute to their own and their children’s wellbeing.

The other road leads them backwards into a Tribal World based on animist religious beliefs such as mauri, (the life force) and which regards science as the “latest force of colonization.” Continue Reading →

Visits: 411