Judy Gill
Challenging policy, practice and ideology in NZ schools and public institutions.
New Zealanders are repeatedly told that Māori spiritual beliefs, practices and traditions must be respected. But when religion and superstition are presented as ‘knowledge’, and criticism of spiritual claims is treated as disrespect, constant demands for respect can eventually produce the opposite.
People are entitled to believe in gods, spirits, tapu, wairua and ancestral presence. Other people are equally entitled not to believe in any of it – and not to have it constantly inserted into their work day, school day, meetings, assemblies and public institutions.
At times the room feels very crowded with dead ancestors. Who exactly are we addressing? The murdered or the murderers? The people who ate human flesh or the people who were eaten? The peaceful ancestors or the violent ones? The benevolent spirits or the malevolent ones?
When spiritual language becomes constant and effectively compulsory, reverence can turn into scepticism and ridicule. The recent story about the waka being excavated on the Chatham Islands is a good example.
‘ANCIENT’
More than 800 pieces of a double-hulled waka have reportedly been recovered near Rangihoua Stream at Rēkohu. The material has been dated to around the mid-1400s.
It is historically and archaeologically interesting, but ‘ancient’ is an inflated description.
My own family’s local church in England is about 400 years older than this pile of decaying timber. Many ordinary English churches approaching a thousand years old remain standing and in regular use. A 15th-century canoe can be significant without pretending it belongs to deep antiquity.
‘SACRED’
Te Ao Māori News quotes Moriori descendant Maui Solomon saying tradition recorded the waka as carrying “the etchu or the gods” and that it was therefore “very tapu”. That is a religious claim, not an archaeological finding.
The timbers are evidence. Their age is evidence. Construction methods can be examined and the form of the vessel reconstructed from physical material. But the proposition that gods travelled in it belongs to belief. Which gods? There is nothing wrong with reporting that tradition says gods travelled in the waka. The problem starts when spiritual tradition and archaeological evidence are allowed to merge into one narrative.
AND NOW TAXPAYERS ARE BEING ASKED FOR $3.5 MILLION
Tākuta Ferris has called on the government to provide $3.5 million for recovery and preservation of the waka. That makes scrutiny entirely legitimate. Taxpayers are entitled to distinguish between what is physically significant, what is historically established, what is reconstructed tradition and what is religion.
THE GALILEE BOAT
The contrast with the Galilee Boat is useful.
The wooden boat preserved beside the Sea of Galilee dates from roughly 100 BC to AD 100. It comes from the place and period associated with Jesus and is commonly nicknamed the “Jesus Boat”, yet no responsible archaeologist claims that Jesus actually travelled in that particular vessel because there is no evidence that he did. Its importance rests on what the surviving boat can actually tell us about first-century life and boatbuilding. The site is in Israel, a Jewish state, and naturally benefits from Christian tourism. But its archaeological importance does not depend upon turning a religious association into an archaeological fact.
THE VASA
The Vasa makes a different point. The magnificent Swedish warship sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and was raised more than three centuries later.
The Vasa is younger than the Chatham Islands waka, yet technologically there is simply no comparison. It was multi-decked, heavily armed, fully rigged, elaborately carved and constructed on a scale requiring far greater engineering, organisation and specialised craftsmanship. Its spectacular failure is itself a lesson in poor engineering and bad decision-making: grandeur and decoration did not make an unstable ship seaworthy.
The Rangihoua waka may be archaeologically important but it remains a comparatively simple 15th-century double-hulled canoe. Calling it tapu or saying gods travelled in it does not make its technology more sophisticated. You cannot make primitive technology remarkable by saying a god went for a ride in it.
WHEN ‘CULTURE’ BECOMES CIVIC RELIGION
None of this would matter greatly if Māori spirituality remained a matter of private belief. But, karakia, atua, wairua, tapu and tūpuna now appear throughout public institutions, government ceremonies and schools. The issue is not whether people are allowed to believe in them. Of course they are. The issue is why everybody else should be expected to listen to, participate in or defer to somebody else’s supernatural worldview in publicly funded settings.
People deserve respect: ideas do not automatically deserve respect. Religious claims can be criticised. Supernatural beliefs can be mocked. Historical claims can be challenged. Public expenditure can be questioned. That is ordinary intellectual freedom.
AND TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING FOR IT – AGAIN
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union estimated on 18 August that paid waiata and karakia practice across nine public-service agencies could also be costing taxpayers approximately $3.5 million a year.
ACT has proposed restricting public-service agencies from initiating or funding cultural and spiritual practices unless genuinely required for the job.
The same problem is in schools. Christian religious instruction is recognised as religion and subjected to statutory safeguards. Yet Māori spiritual material involving atua, ancestral presence and other supernatural concepts can instead be classified as tikanga or culture. Why should one supernatural worldview escape the religious label merely because it is ‘indigenous’?
WHEN RELIGION IS CALLED ‘KNOWLEDGE’
This is where ‘mātauranga Māori’ becomes contentious. Calling something knowledge does not establish that it is knowledge. Some material placed under that label may be practical, observational or empirical. Other material concerns gods, spirits, tapu, mauri, wairua and ancestral presence and they do not have the same evidential status.
The Galilee Boat can be studied without claiming Jesus sailed in it. The Vasa can be studied without adding gods to its history. Why should the standard change in New Zealand? If we want people to trust science and scholarship, we need to stop blurring the boundary between evidence and belief.
PROFESSOR RANGI MĀTĀMUA – AND PROFESSOR JASON ARDAY
New Zealanders have recently had plenty to say about Cambridge and Professor Jason Arday. Perhaps we should be less smug. Professor Rangi Mātāmua’s enormous public influence rests substantially upon his interpretation of a 400-page family manuscript reportedly compiled between 1898 and 1933.
The manuscript has never been published in full for ordinary independent scrutiny, yet observatory-based astronomy was already established in New Zealand many decades before the manuscript was written. Mātāmua’s interpretation has been honoured, funded, taught in schools, embedded in public ceremonies and helped underpin a national holiday.
Has New Zealand been conned?
If that sounds too strong, there is a simple answer:
SHOW US THE MANUSCRIPT.
A similar evidential problem arises in claims about Māori connections with Antarctica, explored in Ranginui: Call of the Ice and challenged by journalist Yvonne van Dongen in “Frozen Myths”. Where does evidence end and mythology begin?
MĀTAURANGA MĀORI – OR INDIGENOUS STUDIES?
Another example stayed with me after the Diocesan School for Girls open day in March 2026. I was shown around by a year-10 student who told me students studied mātauranga Māori in years seven to 10. She was clearly relieved that year 10 was her last year of it. When I asked what they actually studied, she told me they studied indigenous cultures from around the world. My reaction was: then call it Indigenous Studies. She also told me the Treaty of Waitangi was studied repeatedly through both mātauranga Māori and social studies.
There is nothing wrong with studying the Treaty or indigenous cultures. But labels and proportions matter. Māori knowledge is Māori knowledge. Pacific knowledge is Pacific knowledge. Aboriginal Australian knowledge is Aboriginal Australian knowledge. Native American traditions belong to their respective peoples. Putting everything indigenous into one basket does not make it mātauranga Māori.
THIS IS HOW RESPECT IS LOST
Back to the waka. The physical remains exist. Their age can be tested. Their construction can be studied. Their archaeological importance can be debated. Whether gods travelled aboard it is a religious proposition and that distinction should not be difficult. Tell the stories. Preserve the traditions. Study the archaeology. Teach the history. Believe in the spirits if you wish. But do not insist that everybody else participate in those beliefs, hear about them constantly in publicly funded institutions or treat them as established knowledge. Constantly demanding reverence does not necessarily produce respect.
Sometimes it produces the opposite.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
RANGIHOUA WAKA
Te Ao Māori News – Moriori seek urgent support to recover tapu Rangihoua waka
https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2026/08/19/moriori-seek-urgent-support-to-recover-tapu-rangihoua-waka/
Te Ao Māori News – Ocean waka ‘most important discovery in New Zealand archaeology’ https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/03/03/ocean-waka-most-important-discovery-in-new-zealand-archaeology/
Moriori – Rangihoua waka project/background https://www.moriori.co.nz/our-mahi/the-rangihoua-a-moriori-waka-miheke
MATARIKI – RANGI MĀTĀMUA AND THE MANUSCRIPT
Royal Society Te Apārangi – Professor Rangi Mātāmua, 2020 Callaghan Medal
https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/medals-and-awards/research-honours/2020-research-honours-aotearoa/2020-callaghan-medal/
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga – Carkeek Observatory https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/9808/Carkeek%20Observatory
The Good Oil https://goodoil.news/please-show-us-the-manuscript/
ANTARCTICA – “FROZEN MYTHS”
The Good Oil https://goodoil.news/the-frozen-myths/
Doc Edge – Ranginui: Call of the Ice https://docedge.nz/events/ranginui-call-of-the-ice/
JASON ARDAY
Reuters – Jason Arday and the Cambridge plagiarism controversy https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/ex-cambridge-professor-centre-plagiarism-scandal-found-dead-british-media-report-2026-08-14/
The Guardian – Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/aug/01/playbooks-plagiarism-pigs-head-new-claims-surrounding-cambridge-professor-jason-arday
PUBLIC-SERVICE KARAKIA AND WAIATA
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union – MBIE workplace waiata investigation
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/exposed_mbie_s_daily_workplace_waiata_sessions
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union – estimated public-service waiata/karakia costs, 18 August 2026 https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/revealed_act_s_banning_of_public_service_waiata_to_save_an_estimated_3_5_million_per_year
ACT Party – ACT will restore one public service for all New Zealanders
https://www.act.org.nz/news/act-will-restore-one-public-service-for-all-new-zealanders
DIOCESAN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
Judy Gill – Breaking Views – How Does Diocesan School for Girls Give Effect to Te Tiriti? https://breakingviewsnz.blogspot.com/2026/03/judy-gill-how-does-diocesan-school-for.html
THE GALILEE BOAT
Yigal Allon Centre – The Galilee Boat https://en.yigal-allon-centre.org.il/the-ancient-boat/
THE VASA
Vasa Museum – official history https://www.vasamuseet.se/en
