Vision Matauranga Maori seeks to combine knowledge passed down and presently transformed by Maori communities and their ancestors. The vision is noble and necessary, yet a fresh approach transform the current establishment of hegemonic scientific knowledge. In regard to many different fields of environmental management, there has been a major shift in recent decades shift away from an engineering approach towards a more holistic approach. This is where matauranga Maori can inform the practice, to have the true interests of the health of ecosystems and landforms and relevant communities at heart when it comes to research and implementation of actual projects.
As Dr Marama Muru-Lanning pointed out, there is a structural challenge for the acceptance of matauranga Maori, due to well-established scientific institutions primarily based on Cartesianism, where reason is the only way to determine truth. Of course, reason and logic as we know and use it is based on a long history of schools of thought building on one another, tracing back to Plato and Aristotle. This is only one way of knowledge, and we should welcome a flourishing multi-disciplinary range of others.
Scientific institutions, land developers, engineers and councils should interpret matauranga Maori as legitimately compatible with the scientific method and use it to inform their own practices. Maori considered oral stories and myths as ways to teach future generations about environmental hazards. The taniwha is a representation of how the stream functions as its tail flicks from side to side, just as the shape of streams and rivers morph over time. Matauranga Maori explains how the environment works, for Maori have observed the lands of New Zealand closely for centuries.
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Written by Anna Kalatcheva
