As a kiwi let me tell you, there's a lot of revisionist history happening with regards to Maori in progressive circles. theconversation.com is a VERY progressive publication.
It's absolutely bizarre. I've got a friend working in healthcare in New Zealand and she was given a mandatory class which taught that "Western science" is "imperialist" and that Maori traditional knowledge is "just as valid." For reference, Maori traditional knowledge is stuff like ghosts (taniwha) and spiritual energy (mana).
It's like they're taking the noble savage trope to the craziest ends and just running with it; public outcomes be damned. Some really unhinged ideologues are in positions of power right now.
Any details on that? Having worked in health in New Zealand in a patient facing role for all my working life, I’ve never heard of such a thing. I’ve worked in public, private and research/academic roles.
It makes sense to just call the creature what it is in its cultural context as opposed to trying to put an ill-fitting separate cultural notion on it, imo. If something is a taniwha it's a taniwha, and if someone is curious what a taniwha is they can look it up themselves and understand its a creature from a specific region's folklore.
I feel that trying to rename culturally-specific things that don't have a neat translation, like folkloric beings, is generally always poorly fitting. It's like when the qilin is called a unicorn, when a qilin is a fish-scaled deer or ox with lizardly facial features and no affiliation with femininity or maidenhood. So basically almost nothing like a unicorn.
> At best, the notion of political correctness having gone too far is intellectually dishonest; a fallacy similar to a straw-man argument or an ad hominem attack. At worst, it serves as a rallying cry to cover up the excesses of the most illiberal in our society.
It's also a slap in the face to non western scientists who ended up contributing despite all odds. Imagine telling Satyendranath Bose that the theory of Bose condensates is just as valid as random tribal animism.
Any source for this? I am in contact with a number of health science professionals in New Zealand and they haven't seen anything like this or science denial based on race. Generally you tend to see more science denial from the right wing parties such as the NZ National party. I'm not saying labour or for that matter any political party is "good" - but other than homeopathy and friends - science dentist sits pretty firmly on the right.
Two points: Firstly, the article has zero example of the "native knowledge" in question. Secondly, the Maori are not indigenous to New Zealand, arriving a scant couple centuries before Europeans, and had done tremendous damage to the native environment by the time Europeans got there.
Completely untrue. They are absolutely indigenous to NZ.
I'm so tired of this stupid myth being brought up again and again. Yes, Maori arrived in NZ. They were the first people to do so. They are the indigenous people of NZ.
Unless you want to argue that to be "indigenous", you literally need to have evolved in that place, which is a nonsense argument as far as humans are concerned.
Yes, Maori arrived in NZ. They were the first people to do so.
So you don't count as indigenous if you weren't the first? That's bad news for all the Clovis-descended peoples we now call Native Americans, since they were the second major wave of human migration. That is of course ridiculous, because time of inhabitation is a significant part of being indigenous. If it were discovered another group had beaten the Maori to New Zealand, would that suddenly make them not indigenous in your eyes?
Merriam Webster - Indigenous: of or relating to the earliest known inhabitants of a place and especially of a place that was colonized by a now-dominant group
Wikipedia - Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original peoples
By what measure are Maori not indigenous to NZ? If another group arrived first, they certainly didn't stay, and even by your own measure of "time of inhabitation", Maori have been here the longest (at least 350 years before Europeans).
There's also a lot of reactionary right wing response to anything involving Maori which isn't disparaging or outright racist - as evidenced by the apoplectic reaction from some quarters to merely hearing Maori spoken in the media.
A lot of things I hear described as "revisionist" just come down to lack of knowledge of NZ history - eg: claims about "legal" Maori land sales are usually made by people woefully unaware of the actions and conduct of the Maori Land Court.
It's like they're taking the noble savage trope to the craziest ends and just running with it; public outcomes be damned. Some really unhinged ideologues are in positions of power right now.