Māori Philosophies
Excerpts from:
“Māori Philosophy, Indigenous Thinking from Aotearoa” by Georgina Tuari Stewart, 2021
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/maori-philosophy-9781350101654/

Māori Philosophy
“Bicultural policy has been used as a
smokescreen for over 30 years to draw
attention away from socioeconomic
inequalities suffered by Māori”

Māori identity
“’Who’ in Māori is ‘ko wai’ suggesting ‘wai’
has a meaning related to ‘personal identity’ so
waitahi (body) and wairua (spirit) can be
rendered as ‘first part’ and ‘second part’ of the
person”

Māori identity
“The existence of Māori as an Indigenous
culture in Aotearoa New Zealand is erased
from the accounts told by non-Māori that
make up the national imaginary of the
dominant culture”

Māori identity
“Māori traditions are structured by a corpus of
originary and nature narratives that reflect the
underlying concept of kinship between
human beings and all the rest of the elements
of the natural world in which we live”

Māori identity
“It becomes relevant to pluralise the
discussions, since the stories vary from place
to place. We might prefer to talk of Māori
philosophies, then perhaps take the next step
to tribal philosophies”

Māori identity
“The term Māori is a generalisation –an
ethnicity rather than a tribe.
Being Māori in 2020 is many different things,
at different levels, to different people”

Māori identity
“The Māori identity adds to, rather than replacing,
traditional tribal or kinship group identities.
The identity label ‘Māori’ is a modern ethnicity
[that] emerged post-contact with Europeans,
while the iwi kin groups existed before contact”

Māori identity
“To identify as Māori is to stand up for cultural
difference; to raise a small protest against the
universalism and inhumanity of the
contemporary global culture”

Māori identity
“To identify as Māori is to be aware of the extent
to which Māori are problematised and demonised
in the state apparatuses.
Pākehā struggle to see, let alone understand, the
Māori point of view. Pākehā [tend] to see Māori
only in relation to their own interests”

Māori identity
“A constellation of mutually reinforcing ideas [myths],
including that Māori were conquered in war, and as losers
lost all rights; that Māori gave up their sovereignty in signing
the Treaty of Waitangi; that Māori were not the first settlers of
Aotearoa, so cannot claim rights as first peoples; that Māori
are an inferior type of people with inferior intelligence,
language, technology and culture’ and that only
intermarriage with Pākehā had ‘saved’ Māori”

Māori identity
“Distorted versions of history, biology, and
social science, mixed together with ignorance
and arrogance, make a formidable basis for
white privilege in Aotearoa New Zealand”

Māori world
“Māori people often report their experience as
‘living in two worlds’ and these worlds are named
as te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā. Other pairs to
express this are ‘te ao tawhito’ (ancient) and ‘te
ao hurihuri’ or ‘te ao hōu’(new, changing)”

Māori world
“The question of authenticity: At one extreme is the
view that only pre-European artefacts, practices and
technologies can be considered ‘authentic’ or ‘real’
Māori culture. Such views were strongly articulated in
earlier phases of colonial history, when Pākehā were
motivated to announce the end of the Māori world”

Māori world
“In te reo Māori the phrase ‘i mua’ means
‘before’ in both senses: past time and in front
of us. In Māori thinking, the past is before us
because we can see it; we walk backwards
into the future since we cannot look and see
what it will bring”

Māori world
“I reason that Māori should embrace
biculturalism, on our terms, as the logical
alternative to the dominant monoculturalism”

Māori knowledge
“Whakapapa is the central concept in Māori
culture and an organising principle in Māori
philosophy. It translates as something like ‘layer-
upon-layer’.
The single word ‘whakapapa’ acts like a one-
word synopsis, metonym and hologram of a
complete Indigenous worldview”

Māori knowledge
“Whakapapa is the ethical basis of the celebrated Māori
respect and love for nature. ‘Whakapapa kōrero’ found in
Māori sayings and nature narratives are rich parables or
teaching stories. To understand oneself as literally related
to all the living and non-living elements of the natural
world as common descendants of Rangi and Papa makes a
coherent reason for taking care of nature, an ethos Māori
Marsden defined as ‘kaitiakitanga’”

Māori knowledge
Key philosophical Māori concepts [are]
impossible to fully understand and hence prone
to distortion in the absence of an overall
appreciation of the Indigenous Māori worldview.
 Mana: power, authority, prestige
 Tapu: sacred, set apart
 Mauri: life principle, essence
 Hau: spiritual force
 Utu: balance
 Whanaungatanga: kinship or relationship
 Manaaki: practices that uphold mana
 Aroha: to follow the breath, a deep
comprehension of another’s point of view
 Mātauranga: to know, appreciate, apprehend,
understand
 Mōhiotanga: knowledge acquired by
familiarity
 Wānanga: time and space for learning; to
think deeply
 Tohunga: expert qualified in a field

Māori knowledge
 Aro: to face, favour or attend to
something, desire or inclination.
 Whakaaro: to think, tought, plan,
intention, consider, opinion
 Hua: to think, know, be sure of
 Whakahua: to pronounce, quote or
articulate
 Mahara: to think or remember, as well
as intestines, memories.
 Ako: teach or learn, made clear by the
linguistic context
 Three knowledge words:
 Ariā: idea, concept, theory, hypothesis
 Huatau: thought or to think, idea,
opinion or realise, free flowing
 Tautake: fulcrum or philosophy, that
which is central or essential in an activity
or situation

Māori knowledge
“The need for Māori philosophy as an inherently
politically aware tradition and modification of, rather
than a full replacement for, the standard scientific
accounts of knowledge. My view of Māori philosophy
is a liminal version of philosophy than inhabits the
borders rather than the centre of institutional and
academic philosophy: more interested in boundaries
between, rather than separatist claims to, intellectual
and real territory”

Māori knowledge
“To write this book is an act of scholarly
protest and resistance against the sustained
attack posed by colonisation on my
philosophical rights to think Māori, to think as
a Māori and to think with Māori cognitive
resources”

Māori knowledge
“Māori material and symbolic territory has been taken
over and brought under the Pākehā regimes of
bureaucracy, legality and privatisation. Health, welfare
and justice systems, aided by schools and other
education institutions, control the lives of most Māori
people today. Only that which lies beyond the reach of
money cannot be alienated from Māori”