He Aronga Takirua

April 18, 2021

By NZB3

For years we’ve been pressured in New Zealand to be ‘Culturally Safe’ and Politically Correct with reference to Maori customs. Academics have been inventing and changing what these customs were, are, and will be, on the fly quite artificially. A Frankenstein’s Monster of bits and pieces have been constructed in our universities by the likes of television’s Professor Scotty Morrison and his wife. But now, instead of being happy about it, the practitioners are complaining it gets in the way of their paid jobs! The concentration levels of Maori Wokeness so sought after are a burden, burning them out!

Human Resource Management Professor Jarrod Haar (AUT) and his government bureaucrat Dr Willy-John Martin (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) have been granted funding to produce a report called He aronga takirua: Cultural double-shift of Māori scientists. The men set out to prove an idea they had come up with some time before, He Aronga Takirua, which means to be two-faced or double-dealing or compromised.

“Māori academics say they’re having to pull double-shifts – working both as researchers and as unpaid cultural guides for their non-Māori colleagues.”- Māori academics doing unpaid work as cultural guides for colleagues, study finds, RNZ (April 2021)

“Importantly, the term repeatedly made was ‘job burnout’. It appeared to be a strong consequence of the cultural double-shift.” – Harr (April 2021)

“Aronga Takirua…This term was penned by Assoc. Prof. Te Taka Keegan, Prof. Jarrod Haar, and Dr. Willy-John Martin” – Rauika Māngai (2020)

At best, we may suspect that the Maori Scientists lack self-esteem. Why don’t they have the personal and professional boundaries to refuse to drop their paid work for freelance cultural advice? If they’re being drawn away from their career and their research it’s their own responsibility. Or, could it be that being a Maori Scientist is more important to the survey subjects than being a scientist? Perhaps Haar’s Aronga Takirua is an excuse akin to Morrison’s ‘Language Trauma’ by which responsibility for poor performance in learning Maori language is blamed on non-Maori too? Instead of taking responsibility for one’s own language and work-focus and career it seems Maori academics have created terms and models to blame it on the White man.

At worst, might it not be that some Maori Scientists find a better fit for themselves in Social Justice and Cultural Enforcement roles? Affirmative Action hires have been propelled along by extra qualification boosts in the tertiary education system and then prioritised by racial recruitment quotas. Rather than attend to their test tubes perhaps the Maori Scientist voluntarily shuns the hard jobs and creates their own role within the workplace as a moral officer or water purifier. The attrition of Maori Scientists as they defect to cultural jobs might actually demonstrate that they were better suited to those roles all along.

Instead of stepping up to master their own language or profession, the Maori has Victimhood Culture protectors telling non-Maori to retard their own efforts. Try less hard so that the Maori has a chance. This, of course, is Victimhood Culture patronising on the part of Haar and Morrison and not something a genuine and proud authentic Maori with self-esteem needs at all.

“That’s why early career researchers never progress at the same pace as white people..” – Haar (2021)

“A new study has found that many Māori scientists are left with little time for their own work because they’re expected to explain te ao Māori to their work mates,..” – RNZ, ibid

“I would ask respectfully that they make sure that they are not taking a space that a Māori-speaking Māori person is therefore missing out on, and also to lead from behind sometimes, not lead from the front.” – Stacey Morrison,  Gentle, respectful, humble: how non-Māori can help revitalise te reo; The Guardian (April 2020)

I have not been able to find out how much government funding Haar was paid to support his Aronga Takirua hypothesis. The money comes from his co-author’s department, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, via SfTI (Science for Technological Innovation) as administered by a firm Callaghan Innovation². It was doubtless tens of thousands of dollars in pay for the authors and for the travel and accommodation and running costs.

“We followed Māori protocols around conducting culturally safe research, including karakia (prayers), extending hospitality (kai – food) and researching locations comfortable to the participants (offices or home in study one, and on marae – Māori meeting house in study two).”- the report

It’s not clear, either, who the 12 Maori Scientists were who provided the input. In what discipline is their field? Are they social scientists like Haar the Management Professor aspires to be in his report?

The crowning irony, of course, is that Haar’s report diverts funding that is supposed to be put into New Zealand Science. These tens of thousands might have led to new technology or medicine but instead have gone toward cultural overhead in a report bemoaning the diversion of funding/effort toward cultural overhead! The interpretation of many, and probably what Haar has in mind, is that even more science budget should be diverted to pay Maoris for participating in science workplaces.

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1 He aronga takirua: Cultural double-shift of Māori scientists, Haar (April 2021)

2 Probably some kind of Labour 6.0 money laundering scheme involving millions, says my Anarchist inner voice…

Image ref. Haar on Zoom (2021)

Image ref. Prime Minister John Key takes part in the Maori blessing of the Singapore Kiwifruit Gooseberry office, led by a wood carver with pretensions of being Dumbledore; AHNZ

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