Vision Mātauranga, Eclectic Anthropology and the Fading Empire

Abstract

In 2012, I wrote an article titled ‘Māori research collaborations, Mātauranga Māori science, and the appropriation of water in New Zealand’.1 The article attempted to critique Vision Mātauranga (VM)2 policy by examining the relationship between Ngā Pae ō te Māramatanga,3 Ngāi Tahu iwi (tribe) and scientists with interests in freshwater. Seven years on, I admit to having barely scratched the surface regarding the multiple ways the policy is used as a mechanism to advance and create relationships between scientists and Māori communities in the co-production of new knowledge. Back then my commentary was somewhat sceptical of the policy’s design which does not deal with the unequal power relationships created between science experts and flax-root communities. I argued that VM had been created to commodify and globalise Māori knowledge that belongs to Māori communities and had become the expected mechanism for all engagement between university researchers and Māori communities. Much of the risk associated with forming new collaborations rested with Māori communities, and even more so with the Māori researchers who act as intermediaries and brokers between the communities and research teams. Back then, as a scholar trained in social anthropology, the way I understood knowledge transmission and the research part of my world was disconnected from the rest of my life. The probing and critical perspectives I had developed by privileging anthropological ideas and theory overshadowed other ways of interacting and understanding people and place. Like many of my anthropological colleagues I had learnt to be an ‘objective’ participant observer. The aim of participant observation is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals through intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. This method is highly regarded by social and cultural anthropologists around the globe. Now as the Director of a Māori research centre, I am expected to participate in all manner of engagements with Māori and non-Māori groups, and I am constantly confronted by ethical questions when undertaking research projects. VM as a process forces me to ask questions that I never did when I was trying my hand at being a bona fide anthropologist. The questions that shape my scholarship now are as follows: Who will benefit from this research and what will my legacy be?

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