Science and indigenous knowledge: the significance of the mātauranga Māori debate

Abstract

ABSTRACT The debate over the status of mātauranga Māori – the practices and ideas of the first inhabitants of the islands that became known under British colonial rule as New Zealand – has a significance reaching far beyond its shores. The Māori peoples are amongst many indigenous groups globally who found their cultures deprecated by outsiders assuming the role of a governing power. But since the latter part of the twentieth century, arguments for the value of indigenous knowledge have been re-asserted in protest at the perceived dominance of a Western scientific paradigm. Indeed, some defenders of mātauranga Māori want to give it scientific status. Critics reply that mātauranga Māori does not generate genuine knowledge of universals and thus cannot support modern technology. This paper argues that both sides have tended to conflate science with technology, thus treating science as the sovereign standard of all useful knowledge. But not all knowledge must constitute science in order to be worth studying, and science is not wisdom. The paper suggests that recent efforts to give an independent status to indigenous knowledge of the kind that mātauranga Māori represents can be supported by a distinction between ideal types of practical and theoretical knowledge.