One wrote of "the vacuous claims of Māori 'knowledge' bearing some nebulous kinship with science"; another denied "traditional (Māori) knowledge equivalen(ce)" with science, and all three supported Dawkins in condemning the NZ Royal Society for supporting the inclusion of Māoritanga or a Māori view in our schools' science curricula.
Dawkins, never one to mince his words, wrote: "a global response (wow!) has been building against the ludicrous move to incorporate Māori 'ways of knowing' (my emphases throughout) into (our) science curricula ... (There is only one science)...True science is evidence-based, not tradition-based; it incorporates safeguards such as peer review, repeated experimental testing of hypotheses ..." etc.
"If a 'different' way of knowing worked," he wrote, "if it satisfied the above tests of being evidence-based, it would be science. Science works. It lands spacecraft on comets, develops vaccine against plagues ...."
One cannot, of course, deny the achievements of modern science and obviously, the ancestors of the present-day Māori could not build or launch a spacecraft. But they did build and launch large double canoes and sail them over 4,000 kilometres of open ocean from Tahiti to NZ and back when, other than the Vikings, no European sailors had sailed more than a few hundred kilometres from shore. These were not accidental or 'drift' voyages. Some were for discovery; others, with women, plants and animals aboard, were for settlement. Their science "worked."
We do not know exactly how but they almost certainly used the "science" of stars (astronomy), winds, currents (physical oceanography) and the flights of birds (zoology) to explore and navigate.
In other words, they repeatedly observed and tested one set of observations against another before reaching a tentative conclusion. Each new voyage was another test.
Their voyaging was evidence-based, reviewed by their peers, and new evidence was tested against earlier 'hypotheses.' It was, of course, not written down. Māori lacked the technology and a writing system. Their knowledge could only be passed on orally to become part of traditional knowledge. But its origin was evidence- and not tradition-based.
It is true that much traditional knowledge, particularly that concerning the spiritual world, human origins and tribal canoe traditions, is not scientific. While it may be complementary or distantly related, it is not science. But scientists should not and cannot debunk the other strands of knowledge that are empirically-based, as Dawkins and others with little knowledge of Māori have done.
When our school curricula include the "science" of Polynesian ocean exploration, voyaging, discovery and settlement they will also include evidence-based examples of adaptation to NZ's much colder environment with special mention to kumara production and storage: the planting of tubers and not shoots, the choice of north-facing slopes above the frost line, the improvement of soils by transporting sand and gravel from seaside to slope, and the construction of brushwood or stone walls to protect against the wind: the creation of microclimates. Examples in my local area include the terraces on Whitireia Peninsula, Porirua, and the stone walls beyond Cape Palliser.
They will also talk of "rua", the single and multiple interconnected pits where kumara was stored over winter, with some retained for planting in the spring. It was only by repeatedly observing evidence that the ideal humidity and temperature were reached.
The last words lie with Te Rauparaha as he hid from his enemies in a rua. His "Ka mate! Ka ora!" on which the All Blacks haka is based is a perfect way to introduce the scientific —and non-scientific— strands of Māoritanga to students.
-- ACW
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