On Wednesday 29th July, Aneta Morgan (Te Arawa) presented the results of their research project, Taunakitia Te Marae: Marae as Centres of Excellence - a Te Arawa Perspective, whose aim was to identify and share best practice and aspirations in marae development across Te Arawa marae.
In the fourth of our Horizons of Insight seminars for 2015, and as part of our celebration of Matariki 2015, Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) presents Insights from the Maramataka & Science, with Professor Mike Walker and Dr Pauline Harris.
Māori are more likely to be assessed and treated by a health practitioner trained within a western cultural system that pays little attention to Māori worldviews and continue to experience misdiagnosis, non-voluntary admissions, inappropriate psychometric testing, high suicide rates, limited choices, differences in medication regimes and poorer treatment outcomes.
For many years indigenous knowledge has been considered incompatible with western science, mainly due to the differences in knowledge inquiry and transfer, as well as more fundamental beliefs about the inseparable nature of material and non-material aspects of the universe held by the former. Increasingly however, commonalities between the two are being recognised. Both scientists and indigenous knowledge holders, and in particular practitioners, are beginning to work with each other.
Some economists argue for diversity in the way collective resources are managed rather than one having an unquestioning faith in leaving things to the market. Our team supports this thinking and look at how ethics and Māori knowledge can be used equally alongside economics in managing collective Māori assets. We argue that simple measures of collective well-being used alongside mainstream economics are robust enough to help us make collective decisions. The team is developing a Māori knowledge and ethics based decision-making framework for collective assets.
Almost 30 years ago, Jeffrey Sissons, noted historian, proposed two major types of histories principally relating to northern tribal region of New Zealand: (1) founding and (2) conquest. Founding traditions ‘concern marriage, birth and residence; they establish relations between hapū [kin groups] with respect to land’, he wrote (1988, p.200). Certainly this description may apply elsewhere in Aotearoa. There is another dimension of founding narratives that we want to talk about: the voyaging waka. These kōrero (stories) concern entrepreneurial leadership, discovery and expansion.
