# Tūturu Episode 5: Mātauranga Māori

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7QFvIciXiI

[00:01] [Music]
[00:03] Foreign.
[00:06] [Music]
[00:49] Knowledge systems need to make it very, very clear that matauranga Maori is not a traditional term.
[00:56] Terms that were used as responses to colonization actually.
[00:59] So Maori is not a term that we've called ourselves.
[01:03] Was something that was used to unite us as one people.
[01:05] We were in our own tribes, our own, our own husband and so that phrase or the term Maori normal was placed upon us.
[01:10] That kind of a response to the desires of another people wanting to collectively pull us together.
[01:21] Matadonna is not a traditional Maori word for knowledge.
[01:25] We generally use core little or wanana.
[01:28] But what happened is as a response to education, they used the word Marto to know, matotunga became education, and so you've got these Matilda namali which are two words.
[01:40] What's your responses to being colonized put together to stand for a Maori knowledge system?
[01:46] So Maori ways of knowing and understanding.
[01:48] I liked it too.
[01:50] I'm not saying it's a bad two because it's a modern development.
[01:53] So I think began as responses, but now we've started to own, we've started to own Maori, we've started to own martorama, and we're saying they are, they are two.
[02:03] Modern words and a modern phrase, but it's reflective of a much older and deeper understanding of how we understand our world, ourselves, and everything in our world.
[02:17] Is a concept that's used as a catch-all phrase to describe what is actually at a national level.
[02:30] So we talk about — there isn't actually a thing called Martha rangam Maori because all of our mataranga comes through.
[02:43] The repositories for that mataranga are generally our foreign.
[02:52] Is a concept that can be loosely used when we're talking about a catchphrase for all of those things, particularly when we're talking about policies to deal with it or you know common struggles in relation to it, but there.
[03:06] Isn't actually a singular element of Mata rangam Maori.
[03:10] The elements are really foreign.
[03:41] Um, aiwi.
[03:44] And then now that we've accepted that in about the 1990s, I suspect, ah, there's actually knowledge is two knowledge up.
[03:47] And we knowledge is up.
[03:50] And we knowledge there's actually this is.
[03:53] And then now we're down to actually there's a martyr.
[03:55] No, there's actually it comes right down in the jewels down.
[03:59] We started up here and we're actually going back.
[04:01] And we're going down.
[04:02] And we're going down for one final to interact with another fine loop.
[04:07] Um, you were using matoda, you are using tikala, you're using unique things.
[04:19] All those things, it actually to me means also unique a unique set of ways to behave.
[04:36] Um.
[04:51] Foreign.
[04:56] I think about the creation narrative by me and Papa.
[05:01] And even prior to that, I think about how we understand the world, how we came to be.
[05:08] Um, where we go when we die.
[05:10] I think about those narratives I, that's, that's matarangamaritani things that are passed down from one generation to the next.
[05:19] And there's a lot of variety in that when we look at those narratives, for example, that varies throughout the country.
[05:29] Um, now Matariki, the revitalization of our corridor around the maramataka, mataranga Maori L systems of knowledge of understanding who we are, where we've come from, where we're going, and how we connect to each other and to everything else in the living world.
[05:51] Um, to me is um everything you need to survive with, everything you need to to know.
[05:58] Um, how to uh respect your tail, your environment that you're in.
[06:03] Um, all the concepts of Tonga.
[06:07] Um, understanding.
[06:08] Um, how to look after it, how to utilize it.
[06:13] How to utilize your, uh, your forest.
[06:16] Understanding, you know, so it's a beautiful world, but we need to actually understand and learn a lot more that offers us instead of just learning it on the surface and just saying, 'Oh, time is the bush.'
[06:35] We need to go further into finding out now how we can take on and tap into that from those areas at a deeper level so that we gain the benefits out of that and also be able to work and live in harmony without tail with the old environment.
[07:09] in our school it is not a subjected
[07:14] University uh does it's not a standalone thing
[07:17] Mata rangamori as a whole family
[07:25] is uh
[08:06] it's the spiritual side it's the
[08:09] Physical side all in one.
[08:18] All comes out of this long-standing relationship with the tile careful observation of the patterns of the movement of what is called Seasons or shifts or the you know the whether we're talking about the murder of the goal what other aspects and so you know again.
[08:39] If you look at mataranga ahapu it's very contextual to the place where they're standing and there's this concept and when we talk about indigenous it's a very politicized concept when people think about well that's just this idea of culture and the people who were there before colonizers came.
[08:59] There's this other way to understand indigeneity and being indigenous which is you know the living breathing thinking doing manifestation of knowledge that comes.
[09:12] Out of the soils and out of the waters that surround you wherever you are.
[09:14] When the police blooms, we know that the kinase.
[09:21] And that that's observation of the environment over a long period of time.
[09:29] And we start to understand that this is connected to that.
[09:32] And when this happens, that happens.
[09:34] And I think those things can't be denied.
[09:37] Those things also can't be created um in a short time.
[09:41] That's knowledge that is being built up over a long period of observing the natural environment, the movements of the natural environment, the migrations of the birds and of the whales.
[09:56] And we understand that when this happens, this happens.
[09:57] And it's all connected.
[09:59] Um, you can't deny that.
[10:05] So on the criticism, particularly from the Western academics, you know, if I'm not a physicist, so I wouldn't tell a physicist how they should do their job.
[10:14] Nor do I work with string theory.
[10:16] So I wouldn't tell a string theorist how they should do their job.
[10:19] They're not Maori.
[10:22] So I think they're the last persons and last group of people who should be telling us who we are.
[10:27] You want to know what Mount Odomaldi is?
[10:29] The first group of people I talked to is Maori.
[10:31] It's Matarama Maori.
[10:34] I actually feel a little bit sorry for the criticism because it just goes to show you how insular and how afraid I think and um how misinformed those people are.
[10:49] Thinking their way of knowing is the only way of knowing, their way of thinking is the only way of thinking, their way of understanding is the only way to understand something.
[10:59] Those types of belief systems are which have driven some of the greatest disasters in the history of the human race.
[11:05] It has created religious wars.
[11:11] It has created political wars.
[11:13] It's created two world wars.
[11:15] It continues to create.
[11:15] Division because people think my way is the only way to know something.
[11:19] Indigenous peoples have lived in harmony with their environment for for so many years or for generation upon generation.
[11:30] And so I think um yeah, the criticism is is at times it's laughable but it's also sad.
[11:38] And so this way of knowing, being, doing, and relating, it has grown out of the soils that manifests in the way that you speak, that manifests in the way that you name your children, that manifests in the way that you build your footage, that manifests in the way that you pass on your education or transmit your knowledge.
[12:00] All of those things are shaped through that are contextual to the tile that comes out of that.
[12:07] Now if you look to some of the sustainability objectives of the UN and the things that they're talking about, they talk about how we actually need to change everything it.
[12:16] Needs to be, you know, everything needs to be eco-centric.
[12:18] Well, that's how we were already living before the colonies that came along and changed all of that.
[12:27] So this matarana gives us some, you know, locally relevant important aspects of how to, how to solve these issues, how to solve these problems, how to be present with our pile and respond to her in order to provide the healing that's required for each other and for our pile around us.
[13:36] But that's because you're looking at two different things.
[13:38] You're trying to compare apples with oranges.
[13:42] But if you're trying to compare science with science, well, it is by observation in coming to conclusions.
[14:28] If you are a human being, you have science.
[14:30] It's just, um, I think near the tomb we have an issue within.
[14:32] We're not quite, Bucky, I can't understand our view.
[14:37] of the world and now everything's connected
[14:43] [Music]