Bodies of Knowledge

ELIZABETH MCKINLEY (NGATI KAHUNGUNU/NGAI TAHU) BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE Narratives ofColonialism, Science, and Education E nga mana, e nga reo, haere mai. E nga kaiako putaiao, tena koutou. E nga akonga, tena koutou. E nga kairangahau marautanga putaiao, tena koutou. E aku hoa, tena koutou. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou. He Maori toku papa. Ki te taha o tona hakoro. Ko Aoraki tona maunga; Ko Rapaki me Tuahiwi ona marae; Ko Tuahuriri tona hapu; Ko Ngaitahu tona iwi. Ki te taha o tona hakui. Ko Nga W aka-a-Kupe tona pae maunga; Ko Wairarapa tona moana; Ko Moiki me Tuhirangi ona marae; Ko Ngati Hine waka me Ngati Hikawera ona hapu; Ko Ngati Kahungunu ki Wairarapa tona lWl. Ko Liz McKinley taku ingoa. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou. I begin this chapter with a mihi (greeting) that pays respects to all of us as people and to our languages. I especially acknowledge those people who work with us: teachers, students, colleagues and friends in the science education community. I follow this short greeting by citing a shortened form of my whakapapa (Maori an cestry), both mythical and historical, which signals to people my ancestors, where I come from and where I belong in this Maori world. This form of introduction is commonplace in Maori society where we do not ask, "Who are you?" but instead ask, "Where are you from?" Maori who hear my introduction recognize the repre sentations of the self from the geographical locations and people mentioned, and can locate me in an historical narrative that is often connected to them and their people. This form of introduction includes tradition, history, geography, language and ancestry. It is simultaneously a national narrative and a personal identity about Maori as a collective and me as an individual. This introduction may seem strange to readers who think knowing me is knowing my name, my professional position and having some personal information, such as how many children and whether I like red wine or not. So why do I feel compelled to tell you who I am (again) in a language the vast majority of readers have never seen let alone under stand? Within my culture, to be known as Maori is connected to your whakapapa or ancestry, and it speaks about your existence in two ways. First whakapapa encom passes the idea of kinship or whom you are related to by blood. Today we concep tualize it as including genetic inheritance. Maori use whakapapa to show connec- K. Tobin, W.-M Roth (Eds.), The Culture ofScience Education, 343-353. © 2007 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. MCKINLEY tions both within (generational) and between (intermarriage) tribal groupings. Sec ondly, whakapapa is about a person's cultural and spiritual ancestry. These can include origins and explanations for diverse things such as flora and fauna, parts of the human body, words and speaking, and the cosmos. Cultural values and prac tices such as history, waiata (songs), and mythology are also included. Spiritual ancestry is about the mana (prestige) of your tupuna (ancestors)-which is carried forward through the descendants. Whakapapa books, found in families, contain genealogies as well as family and tribal history, alongside the cultural and spiritual ancestry. All this suggests that whakapapa is inclusive of, but wider than, a dis course on corporeality. The work of Frantz Farron recognizes this, pointing out that an analysis of the corporeal schema without situating it within a historico-racial schema is inadequate. For Farron the historico-racial schema is the colonial en counter and how the relations between the colonized and colonizers is shaped in historically specific ways: Below the corporeal schema I had sketched a historico-racial schema. The elements that I used had been provided for me not by "residual sensations and perceptions primarily of a tactile, vestibular, kinaesthetic, and visual charac ter," but by the other, the white man, who had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories. (Farron, 1967, p. 111) The inadequacy of an analysis of the corporeal lay in de-personalization of the experience of the body. Farron argues here that the body is about its history as well as its corporeal nature. Whakapapa is both noun and verb. It is a genetic map and a condition of being. Knowing your ancestry or whakapapa in such a way is impor tant to many Maori and forms the basis of much Maori researching and writing. And so it has been with me. People who have read my work know that issues of identity, and the questions associated with it, have driven my teaching, research and scholarship. For example, I have been concerned with how the identity of "Maori woman" has come to be constituted in contemporary times and what connection, if any, that it has with our colonial past. The questions are placed in a wider, and often deeply felt, politics of the relationship between the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa (Maori) and the de scendants of the British colonial settlers (Pakeha). Academic work based on iden tity has been supported by wide-ranging political and social change that Aotearoa New Zealand has undergone in the last thirty years-change focused on finding ways forward as a bicultural country that recognizes and respects both signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi-the Maori chiefs of New Zealand and the British Crown-that was signed in 1840 and allowed for British settlement. For Maori educationalists, these politics have largely been conceptualized as language ( and knowledge) revitalization through establishing an education system from pre school to tertiary based on Maori philosophy and values, taught through the me dium of te reo Maori (Maori language) and the development of all the supporting policy, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and evaluation that goes with this form of change. 344 .

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