Overcoming ‘Being’ in Favour of Knowledge: The fixing effect of ‘mātauranga’

Abstract

It is common to hear Māori discuss primordial states of Being, yet in colonisation those very central beliefs are forced into weaker utterances. In this process those utterances merely conform to a colonised agenda. ‘Mātauranga’, a tidy term that overwhelmingly refers to an epistemological knowing of the world, colludes nicely with its English equivalent, ‘knowledge’, to further colonise those core contemplations of Being. Its plausibility relies on an orderly regard of things in the world. In education, historical and current practices of schooling pave the way for things in the world so that they amount to mātauranga for Māori, and even the term ‘ako’ will conspire in its own way. Both Novalis and Heidegger have the ability to identify subtly colonising philosophies, and may even propose some theoretical solutions for Māori.