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Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors, especially in names and te reo Māori. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the audio.

0:01Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, illuminating the human side. In this podcast, we unveil the human side of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences and we discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Tani, thank you very much for accepting this invitation. It’s a pleasure having you here in Science Behind the Glass.

0:27I want you to introduce yourself. Tell us who you are, why you are this mysterious character, and why I want that the people around the world knows about Tuari Dawson. Well, thank you so much. It’s a real honor to be here. As you said, my name is Tuari Dawson. I come from my sacred maunga, my sacred mountain. It’s Whangatoatia in the far north from a place called Ahipara. My tribal peoples come from the lands of Ngapuhi.

0:56which is in the far north of New Zealand. And I guess the place that we call home is a place called Te Ohaki o Nauru Marae. And aside from that, I’m also Samoan. My father came from Savai in Western Samoa. And Cook Island is where my grandmother was a Cook Islander from Rarotonga. I come from the island of… I live here in Aotearoa, in New Zealand, and I’m involved in, I guess, a lot of cultural ambassadorship.

1:38I work a lot within the field of health, particularly with indigenous issues around historical, I guess, historical abuses of our people in state care, working with people who have been incarcerated, indigenous people, especially men, and with issues of family violence and the impact of colonization on that process. And I’m also involved in a little bit of martial arts. A little bit.

2:05It’s insane. Thank you very much. I want to give a little bit of background because you are, as you were mentioning, you’re married, you are Samoan, but you also advocate for Indigenous rights and also you represent your family. Can I ask you why, for example, the mopo that is in your face, what is the representation for that and for the Maris? Sure. I guess also something to say is that although I do, do a lot of presenting and representing i guess the only thing that i consider myself to be an expert on is my own experience so when i speak for myself i’m i guess i’m speaking for myself as being maori not for maori as a whole so the perspectives i i kind of give um are not those of the whole they’re really my perspective on being part of the whole um as you can see i wear um which is called mata ora.

3:11And if you’re here in New Zealand and if you’re walking around, I mean, it’s fairly common. Our women wear moko kauae on their chins and men wear mata ora, which can also extend right across the face. Where I come from, we generally wear mata ora on the bottom region of our face, but some have changed that and it’s sort of dependent. Wearing ta moko is, to me… a reminder of responsibility and people all all over the traditional will tell maori have always worn we’re one of the cultures in the pacific that has always had a strong tradition in tattooing it’s interesting that um you know when we look at the word tattoo tattoo comes from um from captain cook the word tattoo and in the polynesian culture the word is the word that we use to talk about, generically about wearing ink in the skin.

4:15Captain Cook, when he came down the South Pacific, he stopped in Tahiti looking for someone who could act as a translator. And he came upon the son of an ariki or a high chief. And his name was Tupai. And Tupai became part of the crew on the Endeavour. When they came to New Zealand, as… is the custom. He saw Captain Cook saw men wearing and women wearing traditional moko and he and Tūpāia, Prince Tūpāia exclaimed tātau, tātau and trying to explain it.

4:54He then went down and wrote in his captain’s log instead of writing tātau, tātau he wrote tattoo. So that’s where the word tattoo actually comes from. So it’s a reference to the tattooing traditions of the Polynesian people. The reason that I wear it is because, like our language, like our culture, and like our story, like many indigenous people around the world, we were subject to the whims of a colonising force.

5:22And one of the, I guess, paradigms that… colonization engenders is the idea that we are all the same and we need to confirm and in an effort to do that they tried to stamp out our language our culture our religion our spiritual practices our martial arts um all of those things which make us us and um so at certain points in our history they had a thing in in our past which is called the Tohunga Suppression Act.

5:56The Tohunga Suppression Act. The Tohunga is, I guess, the closest translation is that you could come from as sort of a person who was very adept in spiritual, traditional genealogy, language, history, tradition, and all those sorts of things. That was a person with a Tohunga. In an effort to stamp us out, they’ve forbid our tattooing, our language, and our traditional practices, in particular, carving.

6:34There’s many instances where if you go to a carved house here in Aotearoa, back in the day, what a lot of our people did was they tore them off the walls and actually buried them and hid them because they knew that they would be taken. And a sad kind of, I guess, prologue to that is that… you see a lot of our traditional carvings and our artworks and all those sorts of things in museums all around the world.

6:58And there’s an active movement ongoing to repatriate those, what we call taonga or treasures, back to their peoples here. And here’s coming back to taonga. For me, taonga is a reminder of a responsibility and a legacy. Māori people believe, at least how I’ve been brought up, that it’s not about the power you have over people, it’s about the responsibility you have to the people.

7:27Even our word for leader or chief, which is a clumsy term, is rangatira. And rangatira is made up of two terms. Ranga means to weave. And tira means people. It’s an old word for a group of people. So it’s not the power that you have over people. It’s the idea that your job is to enrich and bind together people and have responsibility. So I guess for me, when we talk about ngā tira tanga, I’m not a chief or anything of that nature.

8:02But in terms of asserting my… self -chieftainship was to reclaim moko and many thousands and thousands of Māori have and it’s been going on for a long time so it’s been something of a renaissance particularly I would say in the last 40 years so it’s got a really interesting history that we’ll probably leave to another podcast because you won’t and don’t have the time and it’s a long story but in essence I wear it because It’s kind of like I spent a lot of time disliking being Māori.

8:43I grew up believing that it was a birth defect and something that I should be ashamed of. So my whole life I was told, you know, I had to be the one thing I couldn’t be. I had to, I always wanted to have blonde hair and blue eyes and small lips and white skin. And for me, In order to, because I have European ancestry as well, I have Irish and Scottish ancestry as well, which I’m very proud of.

9:08But in order to make peace with the totality of myself, I then had to learn to love the thing that I’d always been taught to hate. And you can sort of, that can be kind of analogous to people who are struggling with their sexuality, their identity as a human being, where they’re from, you know. coming to grips with who they really are and learning to make peace and actually even love that um and so i guess this is my declaration and movement towards something of their nature well that’s that’s amazing because actually is in different cultures the tattooing that you have an idea that was coming from is a the representation on a symbology um and for you specifically and for your culture is like the responsibility more than, as you said, like having the leadership over someone or over a group.

10:03So I think that changed the meaning in different ways for different people and for different cultures. And also that led me to a question related to how as a Western society we see our community how we are how we see each other so for maoris you have a word you let me know if i’m telling it properly that is uh And I guess that in a way that you’re representing yourself with this, with the top local, you measure the health and the success towards the healthy relationship with the community, right?

11:06So we can extend these to our society that is so individualist, so self -centered, unfortunately, the way that we, even like a science. Sadly, there’s many values that I disagree. It has to be completely changed in many things in science and scientific world that is very colonizing way of thinking and separating, for example, our own world that we rely on, nature. So how the Maris can extend and see this community as a whole and how we can learn.

11:49i’m going to give you an example the in colombia in the sierra nevada santa marta that is in the north of colombia there’s different indigenous communities uh between them the corbis that see us as a western westerners as the younger brothers because we made a lot of mistakes because we don’t understand the connection and they are the older brothers that said in that moment hopefully soon we will understand how we are interweaved together and how we are interweaved not only with nature but with each other.

12:26So I want you to explain to us how is that connection with community? How is this a success that we see as Westerners at individual level but you see it as how they grow the community together? I think And the word that you mentioned was whānau. Whānau is a term which can mean family. It’s also the word for whānau. Whānau māngā pepe means to have children. Whānau means to give birth as well.

13:02So the same word that we use for family is the same word we have to give birth. And I think the idea is that… Sometimes it’s about ideas, you know, and the intersection with science is that science is about questioning and it’s about having the discipline to take in new information and to grow. And if need be, to leave some things behind. You know, you make certain assumptions and those assumptions may be based on the information that we had at hand at that time.

13:32But what I like about the discipline of science is that it’s not changed to a bias, it’s changed to the information. And I think that oftentimes in the world in which we live, we see ourselves as separate. We are actually all connected. For Māori people, well, for myself, my thought is that we get into trouble when we see ourselves. When someone is different to us, we see that as separate to us.

14:05People should be able to live in their individuality. You know, you’re talking about the indigenous people in Colombia. I think the thing is to have the applying that ability to critically analyse a narrative and the information that we have is to go back and look at the source of the information. What was it influenced by? What cultural, economic and political factors led us to believe the things that we believe?

14:31And I think when we can go back and have honest conversations about that, as opposed to sort of letting things lie, then I think that’s the way to… understanding each other. I think that oftentimes we see someone as being different as being separate, but being distinct is not necessarily being different. If perhaps, like for me, I grew up being a Catholic. I’m not a Catholic and I’m not a Christian, but that’s how I grew up.

14:58For me, the information that I had growing up led me to certain beliefs, certain self -beliefs, and it’s not to say I didn’t take anything away. from growing up going to Catholic schools my whole life and from Catholicism as a discipline and as a practice. But I got to a certain point where the information that I was getting and I guess my view of the world became wider. And so I was able to begin a journey.

15:28And I think the problem is when we meet as individual people or as a group, we tend to do this thing when two people meet, there’s always this moment of… of who’s stronger, who’s bigger, who’s faster, who has more guns, who has more land. And there’s a tendency to measure people by your own values, by your own view of the world, rather than actually sitting with each other in a tangible way and allowing an exchange to happen and having real conversations, being genuinely curious.

16:04I think that’s the thing which I really appreciate about science is a… as a discipline, that there is a genuine curiosity and that, you know, empirical data and things of that nature is really important. So how do we treat each other? How do we heal? How do we come to, how do we join together? I think the thing is, it’s not necessarily about joining together, but it’s about being okay with being who we are.

16:31So I don’t need Dr Hernandez to be Tuari. And Dr. Hernandez doesn’t need me to be anything other than myself. You know what I mean? And it’s this thing of we have to sit with each other and be genuinely curious and be genuinely open to making mistakes. We’re all so scared of making mistakes. You know, you got to work, you know, you work in any industry and people are going, you know, people don’t want to make mistakes.

17:00I mean, you know, the greatest scientists, the greatest philosophers, the greatest mathematicians, the greatest… Nobel Peace Prize winners, they created theories that fell down. They had ideas about the world and all of these things. I’m sure Albert Einstein, before he came up with the theory of relativity, came up with a bunch of crazy things that in later life you probably thought, I can’t believe I actually meant that.

17:27So it’s that willingness to break down your expectation and really be honest about what your cognitive bias is. about other people and other cultures um if i get told if the people the non -maori people in new zealand are told by their grandparents that maori people polynesian people are lazy and they’re stupid and they’re substandard and all these sorts of things they that thing becomes a generational narrative and what was once something that you could question now just becomes the way it is but that’s just the way it is and when you dig a little bit deeper into those beliefs it becomes this thing of people don’t know why they believe that it’s just something they’ve always been told and i think that’s why science is so important because if you apply that rigor and that discipline then i think there can be some real advances made not just in terms of technology but in terms of you know, psychology, sociology, all of those things that we tend to at times kind of forget, you know, we are different and we are the same and we can be both those things at the same time.

18:38How we reconciliate these differences, especially in this world that we have? being we are so biased like we see it worldwide especially in this moment that in different countries we just take parties and we just see the differences but know that yeah we are different people but we are not separate how in how the marries of course oh yourself how you reconciliate with these bigger differences as you said like a sitting down and this in the honor but in what What is the way, what is the path that we can reconciliate as a society?

19:19How do you do it? Because I guess there’s a lot of disagreements, but how do you get in that reconciliation? Reconciliation is a big question. I think the question, probably the first question is how we create genuine connection. um i’ll give an example so when i was lucky enough to to meet you in person and and spend some time in your company in your partner’s company and you made arepa and you made this beautiful dish that came from colombia it was so good and we sat there and we enjoyed it together and i could have sat there and eaten them all day we had we shared food I think what it comes down to is really tangible, simple things.

20:03I think we look to try and change the world as opposed to influencing the part of the world that we do influence. So it’s being about accountable in your own families, in your own communities. It’s about being open to change. It’s like, for me, one of the things that I find really hard about racism is that when I experience it, I would rather someone be racist to my face than pretend to be my friend and be racist behind my back.

20:36At least you know where a person stands. And I think it’s the idea that irrespective of where we’re from, you know, people talk about left and on the right and on the left, and these things have kind of tended to kind of permeate a lot of the discussion around connection with people. And I think that there are points on a map. And… They’re imaginary lines and they’re imaginary directions.

21:01Now, there are so many shades. There are so many, you know, there’s so many different directions you can go. It’s not just north, south, east and west. You can go northeasterly, norwesterly, you know, south, south. You know, there’s so many shades within the idea of four different corners. So the thing is, we have to ask ourself, you know, what do we have in common? And it’s this.

21:25honest seeking and striving to go what do we have in common because if you have something in common with someone and it can it doesn’t necessarily mean to need to be a view of the world it might be a book it might be a song it might be a style of music it might be a food it might be a place that you’ve hollered holiday it doesn’t necessarily mean to have you know you don’t have to have a blood tangible connection but if you can find a point of connection you can build from that you know for a moment you’re able to go look we are able to enjoy this particular author together or you know you might meet someone who um you know perhaps there’s been a study or a paper a peer -reviewed paper that you’ve both both read but you have different points of view on that on that paper but the thing is it’s about creating a debate and being healthy and being honest and having integrity in that debate as opposed to arguing when we can really debate each other That’s when, rather than who’s got the loudest voice, when we really have a good debate, you know what it’s like.

22:26When you sit down with someone and have a really good debate, you come away with a respect and perhaps a little bit more knowledge of that person and their standpoint. But the thing is that we’re so engaged in the idea of being right or wrong. If we can sit quietly long enough and really be in each other’s company and really listen, not just wait for our turn to talk, that’s when real change happens.

22:49And I think… we think you know we think globally but we have to act locally within our own with our own families within our own communities wow yes that’s very good i i also i think that’s something that you mentioned before um about like uh finding the common ground something a song a band a dish that we have in someone There’s a writer, she’s Nigerian, Chimamanda Nasi, that she said the powerful tool, I would say, that finding the middle ground in our differences and how similar we are, similarities, and not focusing on those disparities or just biases.

23:44Because, yeah, we have a lot of different points of view. But, yeah. That’s very cool. I love the way that you’re saying and explaining this. I also want to know about your passion about martial arts. Sensei, you correct me. I want to know, you are an ambassador, I could say, from the Maori martial arts, but also you have learned different techniques and different martial arts from Japan, from karate.

24:20And you’re traveling around the world showing this. What is the meaning for the Maori martial arts? And why you feel this appealing and this attraction for other martial arts and your way of spreading that knowledge? Well, in February next year, I would have been involved in the martial arts for 50 years. So I’m coming up to a half century. And there’s people who have been involved a lot longer.

24:45I guess for me, my introduction to martial arts came because I grew up in a very violent family. I grew up in a very violent family environment. And I saw a lot of violence perpetrated to my mother, especially. And I wanted to find a way, I think, on some level to protect her and protect myself. That’s where it all started. In terms of getting involved in the Okinawan and Japanese martial arts, I…

25:13And like many kids, watch a lot of Bruce Lee movies and watch the Kung Fu movies and all those kind of cheesy things and became really attracted to the idea of having some autonomy and some control over myself. And also because it was very spectacular. I think when you’re growing up and you’re trying to figure out who you are, especially, I can only speak for young men, having been one once, is that we gravitate towards things which make us feel powerful and confident.

25:42you know at a certain point of that age it’s power over other people we believe power and respect to be the same thing so my ability to be able to do a back somersault or a kick or a punch or something like that was in some way distinguished me so i was really attracted to the physical utility of it and you know i’ve lived in japan and i’ve traveled to korea and china and other places to study now the difference between studying the asian martial arts which i’m really lucky to be a part of is that and i’ve i’ve talked about this before is that i know that when i go to okinawa and i go to japan if i was going to columbia or any other country full stop australia that i’m a bird in a tree i’m a bird that is landing in the tree of the indigeneity of that country right so when i go to okinawa japan i’m always going to be the bird in the tree you know i’m landing on the branches of the tree the tree being that country that culture that place i’m never going to be a part of the tree but i can sit in the branches and i can feed on the fruits that those branches provide the problem is is that when i start forgetting that the problem is when i start forgetting what my role is my role in going to other places and being involved in these things that are not part of my own culture is that i forget to be a good guest you know and i think the role of guests is really important so When I’m studying our own indigenous arts, I’m no longer the bird, now I’m the tree.

27:17And the opportunity, my responsibility is to have care and responsibility and respect for the birds that land on the branches of our tree. So it’s the difference between being a tree, being a tree here, and a bird in a tree in other countries. And for me, our martial arts are ways of passing on language and stories and history and tradition and our spirituality and all those sorts of things.

27:57And it’s not that they’re superior to anyone else. There’s only so many ways a body can move. There’s only so many ways you can attack a human body or defend yourself. But it’s what goes with it. It’s part of what we call Te Ao Māori and it’s the Māori world. Now you have elements of Te Ao Kohatu. So Te Ao Kohatu means the ancient world, the world of stone. And Te Ao Hurihuri. Hurihuri means to turn, to turn.

28:21So it’s a turning, evolving world. So to understand our place in the evolving world, we have to look back and remember that we are part of the old world. And I think that’s why I enjoy, I’ve had opportunities to, you know, teach around the world to bring our martial arts. And martial arts is sort of kind of an odd term because it’s very much an English term. I would say it’s more about our, how would I put this?

28:49It’s about bringing our mātauranga. So mātauranga is about knowledge. It’s not necessarily about fighting. It’s about preservation. An example is some of our techniques, some of the ways in which we learn are very much entrenched in games and very much entrenched in old stories and very much entrenched in remembering certain events. It’s all tied in. And that intrigues me. That intrigues me.

29:21So when I practice karate or Aikido or Judo or whatever it is I’m doing, I am a guest. When I practice maurakau, maupatu, lungomamau, any of those sort of indigenous arts, I’m the tree. Maybe not the biggest tree, certainly not the biggest tree, but, you know, I have roots in the garden. So that’s kind of how I view it. And I always feel very honoured when I get an opportunity to share that with people, and I’ve been very lucky.

29:54And I’ve really, really met some incredible people who are doing likewise as well in their own cultures. You have this type of identity to Wairua. Wairua, the spirit. Beautiful pronunciation. And then this connection to the land. It’s not about combat, as you said. It’s about the history and telling how this learning or incorporating other… a martial arts uh for example karate comes into do you think that is like a it enhances the knowledge it just tells another story parallel how do you how you embrace this different way of knowledge because super ancient too but then it’s also a spiritual connection i don’t know much about the other martial arts no much But I didn’t have an idea that was an expression and storytelling and remembrance.

31:07But how do you embrace the other ones? And why do you embrace the other martial arts? I think when it comes to the martial arts, particularly, and I’m very lucky to study Okinawan and Japanese martial arts to a large degree. And it’s a passion and I really enjoy it. um the i guess for me when i when i come to i think people come to martial arts for lots of different reasons um some people come because they are looking for something and for a lot of people they’re coming looking for identity they’re coming looking for i guess for one of a bit of they’re coming to look for a tribe they’re wanting to find their tribe their people their community And that kind of does happen.

31:54And people become very connected to those things. For me, I don’t come to martial arts to find a tribe or a community. I’m part of one. You know, like I’m not coming to look to try and make myself Okinawan or Japanese. I have a culture and I have a language that I’m on the daily trying to get better at and on the daily trying to understand and understand my place in it. I think…

32:20For me, it’s a wonderful physical discipline. It’s a wonderful meditative discipline. But it’s also like, we have a saying, and it goes, So the idea is that you bring your basket, I will bring my basket, and together we’ll open them up and we’ll eat from both, and we’ll both feast together. So I believe that… And Polynesian people, we know very much about, we were a very mobile people throughout Polynesia, throughout the Pacific.

32:58And I think that we were very good at repurposing and taking advantage of the natural world. Well, not taking advantage, but being able to work in with the natural world to put ourselves in a position to thrive. So I guess in that way, I look at the, Japanese and Okinawa martial arts that I do is an opportunity to, it’s a section in the library that is my life. And it’s a library that I spend a lot of time in, but it’s not the only book.

33:32And it’s not the library. My culture is the library. My culture is the container. So what I try to do with those martial arts is do them with integrity and try to do them with as much, try to do them, try to do, justice to the spirit and to the custom. I don’t mix Japanese martial arts and Māori traditions and I guess to a certain extent they do mix in me because that’s what my experience has been and people have sort of said oh you know the way that I do certain things seem very one or the other but I think that they have their own esteem.

34:09I think they have their own mana. I think they have their own integrity and some things are not meant to be mixed so If I started, say, for instance, teaching Māori weapons in my dojo, or I started teaching Japanese weapons in my marae, I think that takes away. They have their own esteem, and I think sometimes you can diminish both by not doing justice to them correctly. That’s just my own thought.

34:36Some people do, and I’m sure they do it successfully, but I think you shouldn’t cross the stream, so to speak. Now, I agree. I think that you should recognize each one, but not necessarily have to mix together, but don’t necessarily have to disagree together. I had a chance to practice karate just for the Olympics for the reasons that you said. It’s like I want to learn self -defense and be able to…

35:07I don’t know, to say like I control myself and the anger and be able to defend myself. So my inspiration was the windshield. I know because it was so soft, so gentle. And yeah, and then it was like basically designed for women. And then it was just not like this enforcing. Well, it was actually designed by a woman. By a woman, exactly. And then I love the way that it was just flow.

35:41It’s not like enforcing. It’s not about imposing. It’s not about the strength. And I love that. And that in karate form. reasons that a friend of mine was the one misha was the one suggesting to go there i enjoyed so much i have an injury and i stopped but i i love it i admire it i always be just aware of that so yes that was one of the parts of some representation not looking for a community as you said i just look for more like an inner myself i could say yep i try to understand that yes And then I also want to know, if we move about a part of your culture, there are huge advocates about protecting nature.

36:32Sure. Because for you, they are your equals. The mountains, the rivers, and I guess the forest. And you have a concept in Maori culture that is fenua. Fenua, yep. I get this. Which means both land and placenta. So, Maoris have been advocating for the rights of nature and then recently was granted the rights for Wanganui River. And that is a living, a living being. And not only the river, there’s also a mountain.

37:18And there’s also a forest that has been in conflict with the ground for so many centuries, I could say. And until finally nobody lives there. But it’s like the understanding that is, I could say, a persona. And then how this inspiration, because it has been an inspiration for so many… and indigenous communities that have getting rights. Even in Colombia, I didn’t have any idea there’s a river that got the rights, the Atrato River.

37:48And it was the same, like respecting as an own. When we change the condition of, as a Western society, we think there’s like an object or like something that we can extract from. I think that we change the meaning and the connection with them. can you explain why so important that connection you are connected deeply connected and that’s a huge difference how we how we westerns seeing the a nature not like a i i i love nature i that’s because i’m biologist but goes a little bit beyond that for me i love arthropods that is the spiders insects or scorpions but not because they are like me although they have many behaviors that they are like us they are so different but the intricate weights the patterns that they form their relevance and the roles that they have in the natural world is just mind -blowing so every time that i see another living thing or no human living thing for me is that connection so i want to understand to you and how you had that different connection.

39:08Okay, well, one, let me say, when it comes to the Whanganui River, one, I’m not from Whanganui. I mean, my people are not from there, so I’m purely speaking from the perspective of someone who’s aware of it. I’m not speaking as someone who’s from the Whanganui. I wouldn’t presume to speak for their people, for their iwi. But I suppose if you think of it, if we take it back a step, you know there’s that saying, Teach a man to fish.

39:32It was like, give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish he’ll eat for a lifetime. If we look at it from, I guess, a Māori, and I would say even an indigenous perspective, it would be like, give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man how to protect fish, how to protect waterways, and we all eat. So the idea of, you know, when you’re talking about kaitiakitanga, kaitiakitanga means to lift or to hold something.

40:04And the idea is that we all have a responsibility to nature, to the natural world and to each other. When you’re talking about whenua, the whenua is, as you said, is the word for land, but it’s also the word for placenta. When Māori children are born, this doesn’t happen in all cases, but it happens in most. The family will take the placenta and they will bury it in the whenua, in the land, in the place where their people come from or their family comes from.

40:31So there is always a connection, an acknowledgement of land, and an idea that it’s not about ownership, but it is about doing your part to preserve. And in terms of making the Whanganui River, give it the status of a living thing. It’s always had that status for Māori people. Everywhere, the whenua, the land, has always had that. What’s kind of happened is that it’s become a new thing, I guess, from a Western perspective, but it’s a very old thing from a Māori perspective.

41:10We’ve always seen the land as a living thing, a nurturing mother. We’ve always seen something worthy of respect. Do we always do it? No, no, we don’t. Sometimes, you know, we are like every other race of human. We make our mistakes and we’re not, despite being Māori, it doesn’t make us perfect, spiritual, enlightened beings. But we’ve always had a consciousness around everything intrinsically has a mauri, from the things you own to the things you make.

41:43So you have what’s called mauri, mauri ora. the living force, and maure mate, the stuff that has passed. So I’ll give you an example. Maure ora is… When we say hello, we say kia ora. So kia ora, kia ora. Ora means to be well. So even how we speak to each other is be well. The idea that… Order is a wellspring. Order is something which nurtures and feeds not only the land, but also the people upon it and the generations to come.

42:16It’s about seeing the world as not as a possession, but as a relative. It’s about seeing the birds and the animals that you know you love so much, not as something separate from us, but something related to us, a non -human family, and that we have a responsibility to. And if we get quiet enough, and we be patient enough, we can actually hear what they’re telling us in lots of different ways.

42:44Perhaps not in words that we can write, perhaps not in words, but certainly there are so many things in the natural world. You know, you as a biologist know this better than me. There’s so many lessons that we can learn from the natural world, but we just need to get quiet enough to hear them. And I think when we start to regard… the world around us with respect, when we can start to regard ourselves as something deserving of respect, that’s when we kind of start to see the world as a bigger place and our responsibility to it.

43:20A lot of indigenous peoples, not just in Aotearoa, but around the world, have a very strong connection to the natural world. I’ll give an example. In the Pacific, When people talk about the Pacific Islands, people talk about a group of islands separated by water. But you ask Pacific people, we are a group of people connected by water. So there’s a subtle shift in the way that we think about things.

43:47Not better, not more advanced, just a slightly different worldview. And I think that going back to talking about the Whanganui River, what it does is it really acknowledges a relationship. And it’s a bold step, but it’s one that’s existed in the Māori world for thousands of years. And I would say the indigenous world as well. Now, there are people that are, we have indigenous brothers and sisters, older brothers and sisters all around the world.

44:15You know, you reside in Australia. Well, the traditional owners, the indigenous people of Australia are our older brothers and sisters. They have been there for… Hundreds of thousands of years. They have a tradition and a history and they have learnings that if we get quite enough, we can learn from. But also what that requires is us to look at, are we being a part of a solution or part of a problem?

44:44So the idea that we create spaces, as an example, welcome to country. You know, like in the last, I guess, year, we’ve seen… indigenous people encouraged to stand up and not claim the land, but welcome people to it and try to teach something, try to open themselves in quite a vulnerable way to talk about the importance of the land, the stories, the old stories of the land. And what’s happened is people have taken that as some kind of threat.

45:18People have got angry about it and they’ve missed a human interaction and a valuable experience. So when we can take ourselves off the table and just really listen, when we can relate to a body of water like a human being that feeds us, when we can relate to the land like something that is living and provides with us, when we relate to the natural world and to the non -human relatives that occupy it, that’s when it starts to happen.

45:43And it doesn’t have to be a big shift. You know, people love their animals, their cats and their dogs. Just try and approach other people with that same level of care, that same level of respect, you know, like… don’t go home and treat a beloved pet like a family member and then walk down the road and look down on someone because they might be sitting there with a bowl out, you know, or, you know, just try to apply that across the board as opposed to in certain situations.

46:12That would be, so that was a long way of answering that, but I hope that answered some of it. Sure. I think I see that. And as you were saying, like when we treat the, know human beings and beings as an equals, we also let that door open of not only listening, but learning from them. Well, I grew up in a particular family with my mom and with a lot of furry kids, dogs and cats.

46:49I learned so much from them. Resilience, forgiveness. And so being like a very, like defending the loved ones with passion. And also the unconditional love that is not expecting anything. I think that I learned to love through them because they don’t have that expectation that we have with other human beings or with, you know. with their partner or all those constraints that we make around us.

47:25So I think that is an amazing point and it’s an inspiration, as I said, for many countries, for other ones, because you have a special connection with land as many indigenous worldwide have it, but they don’t have the chance to change the conditions because of the colonization. You have a big difference with many indigenous communities around the world. And it’s like you had a treaty with the crown.

47:57That’s the one white donkey treaty, right? Yes. So that makes, it has been a trouble when you sign with the, when you sign that treaty with the crown. Because in theory, it was at the beginning, it was like respecting the sovereignty of the Maris as a partnership. But unfortunately, always as a colonizer, the crown never respects that. And it has been a battle for wins and losses with them.

48:29But thanks to that treaty, it set the step in a big different place. And that hopefully will continue growing as a partnership instead of like something that you have to fight for. Yeah. So how this has changed, like at Mari level perspective, I know you cannot talk about your people, but in your point of view, how does these setbacks and forwards have changed over time? Well. The Treaty of Waitangi is not a unique experience for indigenous people.

49:16The history of treaties throughout the indigenous people around the world follows a very similar story. Treaties were made as a matter of expedience as opposed to genuine idea of connection and unity and mutual respect. I’m sure there were some people who did it in that spirit, but here in New Zealand, um it seemed to be a matter of expedience in which um the crown the government and all those people wanting to were really wanting to do something to kind of pacify the natives and um it was entered into and it was entered into in a spirit of of respect but it didn’t last long and what tended to happen what happened was that There’s a whole lot of historical reasons as to injustices as to what happened.

50:12But in essence, it’s a founding document of New Zealand. And it’s one that is extremely contentious, especially now. It’s kind of like the idea of a treaty is that it is a bonding contract that is not subject to revision. just because it happened just because it’s a matter of expedience so what’s happening right now we have a fortunately we have a government that is very much hell -bent on redefining the terms and the way and the effect and it’s and it’s as a as a founding document they’re wanting to shall we say um review the terms very much in their favor and in some ways look at it as a historical document as opposed to a binding one In terms of being Māori, the Treaty of Waitangi is a grain of sand on a very large beach.

51:05In terms of the struggle of our people, it’s something which is happening right now as we speak. The knives are out. We have a government that is… They’re not even subtle about their racism. And the thing is, is that… We also have a political situation which tends to find it politically expedient to whip people up into a state of racism. And they utilise the tools of stereotype and fear and a lack of education to get people scared.

51:48And the thing is that what do people do when they get scared? Genuinely, reaction is one of anger. And when people don’t understand a thing, they don’t want to admit their ignorance, so they get angry about it. And what happens is, in a very unscientific way, how they feel about a thing becomes a reality for them. So it’s not about facts. It’s not about looking at history. It’s not about coming to your own conclusion based on your own study.

52:11It’s about Facebook and social media and how you consume your information. And it’s really, it comes down to a bunch of ideas and stereotypes, which is a very lazy way of looking at the world. I mean, I imagine that, you know, in your life, when people hear you’re from Colombia, you know, there’s all these things around, you know, Pablo Escobar and, you know, all these kind of, you know, all those many movies that have kind of been created around the cartels and all those sort of things.

52:46And yet, I would imagine that the beauty and the pride and the power and the history of Colombia as a people, as different peoples of different ethnic groups, that makes up a very small part of it. But it becomes expedient. If I want people to dislike people from Colombia, I’m going to go, well, you know, they all do drugs and they’re all in the cartels. All of those sorts of things.

53:13And what that does is it creates a narrative that’s just not true. And it minimises the actual culture and the history and the tradition and the many wonderful things of the culture. And I guess we’re experiencing that here right now. But here is what my thought is. There are people in the government that are frightened of us being separate. We’ve never wanted to be separate. We do want to be distinct.

53:44And they will do what they do. And if they’re not ready to sit down and have the conversation that we had, that we were talking about earlier with us, and sit down and share a meal together and have a real conversation and, yes, even debate, then we’ll be here when their great -grandchildren are here and we’ll talk to them. We’ll sit down with their great -grandchildren when they’re ready to have the conversation.

54:10So… You know, we see ourselves, I would say, well, I see myself as, at best, you know, a paddler on a canoe, you know, and the canoe is our people and the canoe is our future and the canoe is our history. But at some point, I’m going to disappear from that canoe, but we have to create space for the next people to take up their paddle and continue their journey. I’m a very small part, I’m a very small…

54:39grain of sand on a very large beach and I don’t particularly think that you know the world is a much bigger place and I don’t think I particularly have any interesting contribution but I can paddle so I’ll paddle as long as I can and then vacate the seat when I’m too old to paddle and let people who are younger more passionate, better educated, all those sorts of things take up my role.

55:08And that’s my job. My job is not to hold a thing. My job is to craft it and hand it to the next person. Yes, that’s very inspiring, Wari. And something that you said is very, I agree with the sense that, for example, we… as a colombian so i will speak by myself like i said i can’t speak for every colombian but what i have realized is that a yeah there’s a lot fear spreads like a virus very easily misinformation even like you can see it in science for one paper that says a vaccine was wrong it was like a predisposing people to autism just get completely dismantled even though that was withdrawal and that even though that it was like i know that was wrong people just get that that bad news right and then social media something that is playing one of our guests uh dr mark williams is like a because we are not from to front with that person we we don’t have the chemistry of connecting with the person.

56:26Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so mean through social media because we don’t see the person. Or if we see it through a screen, we can’t connect. I think that’s a way. No, unfortunately, we are very seen separate from each other with our own point of views. But not thinking like, OK, well, I don’t have to offend that person. And also, at the same time, for me, it’s a responsibility that many influencers are just or explain lies or it’s easy just to go there and just create a believing and spreading the fear.

57:07that are responsibility that make these people like, well, actually, this is what actually is happening. These are the facts. These are the supporting. I believe that when in Colombia, the indigenous got rights in the constitution, but the government has neglected all of them. but the big difference is like in the constitution they are recognized and that’s a way of protection and to a certain extent i think that we are coming back to the same narratives of hatred that we lived before and then led us to many wars and i unfortunately think that we haven’t learned our lesson and we go through the same one and i I agree with you that this says, like, we have to not only inform ourselves, but trying to make a connection and see, like, why they think the other way they think.

58:17Why, when people say, like, oh yeah, Pablo Escobar, oh yeah, the drug dealer. So, like, yeah, that’s only one tiny little part of our history. I know that we have a lot of violence, but there is even more. Like, there’s more things to… think about Colombia, the Nobel Prize of Literature, or do you know all this scientific work that has been done, or like all this marble culture behind all this fear.

58:42So yeah, I completely agree that we have to go a little bit deeper instead of just getting into the surface and connecting, even trying to connect with the strings. And to finalize, I would like you to… talk a little bit about you have a podcast that you have two podcasts right you have one podcast that they that is called a life indigenous and you have another podcast that is a invisible sensei right i will and then you have a special with answers And sex files.

59:22So I want you to tell us a little bit why you’re so advocating with the indigenous life and also the part of your passion that has been the martial arts and also these funny ways of sex files. Okay, so Life Indigenous is a podcast I started a couple of years ago. To be honest, at the moment it’s on hiatus and has been for a wee while. I need to get back into it. There’s a few episodes in there, but I’m kind of formulating.

59:53It’s all a question of time. The idea of Life Indigenous was not to kind of make pronouncements about the world. It was about to share an experience of what it’s like for me as an Indigenous man growing up and, you know, trying to live. I guess, my indigenous life and sort of some of the day -to -day struggles and trials and tribulations and also beautiful moments and, you know, the connectedness of people.

1:00:23That’s really what it’s about. And I guess maybe share a little bit of how I tend to frame the world and things which are quite interesting. So we look at things like spirituality. We look at the role of having a religious upbringing. um the idea of the the difference between the spiritual world and the physical world from from i guess from my maori from a maori perspective a maori perspective not the maori perspective um and yeah it’s just really about me musing on those kind of things and it’s kind of Yeah, I hope that people find it interesting, but it’s really just me goofing off in front of a microphone for a period of time, just sharing thoughts as is my way.

1:01:06The Invisible Sensei podcast is coming up to 400 episodes, and I started in 2017, I think, and it’s been a really interesting thing. People talk about podcasts. If you have the opportunity and means to do a podcast and you think you have something to say, I would encourage you to do it. I started in 2017. Again, it’s really about my experience practicing martial arts. A friend of mine has said to me a while ago, the Invisible Sensei isn’t so much about, it’s not about learning martial arts, it’s about existing as a martial artist.

1:01:44And I talk about myself in the sense that, you know, I’m in my 50s, you know, all the trials and tribulations of getting older, you know, my ego. My injuries, my experiences, my foibles, the things I like, the things that I don’t like, me being a really grumpy old man at times. But then kind of, yeah, it’s just kind of, it’s just my thoughts, I suppose. And I get to interview some really cool people and a wonderful community is growing around that.

1:02:15The Anzac Files is, I have and always been a huge nerd. I’m a massive nerd and I’m happy about it. I don’t care. I grew up in a community where that was not a good thing. But when I got out of home, I just thought I’m going to embrace it. So I love all things sci -fi and fantasy and I love the arts and I love creativity and theatre and music and just all those wonderful things.

1:02:39When people talk about martial artists, there is an artist in there. And so it’s an opportunity to kind of sit with a friend of mine, Paul Broomhall, and we talk about everything from flying saucers to Bigfoot. I guess in that instance, I’m a little bit more of a skeptic than what my outsider is. He is very much a true believer, but he has valid reasons for being that way. And so we just talk about these things.

1:03:09There’s nothing like a good nerd -off. You know, you get together with a good nerd. Like I’ve got another mate of mine. He’s a very capable martial artist. And he actually works in law enforcement. He looks like a Viking, but he’s got the soul of a poet. A big, strong, gentle giant, but a total nerd. So whenever me and that particular gentleman get together, it’s like we’re doing much, we’re punching each other and kicking each other one minute, and the next minute we’ll be talking about the latest episode of Star Trek or Warhammer or those sorts of things.

1:03:42So I guess for me, it’s… The spice of life. The spice of life. I mean… You know, there are things that I really like to talk about. And also growing up in a place, in a family where you were encouraged to be as quiet as possible and not make any noise, where you were seen and not heard. It’s nice now in later life to just give vent to that creative spirit. And yeah, I really enjoy it.

1:04:06I think, you know, we were talking before about, you know, what are some of the ways back to ourselves? And I think that’s why voices like yours, You know, when we had conversations and I sort of ask you questions about animal behaviours and all those sorts of things, I always find that really intriguing because there always seemed to be a wonderful analogy for how we as humans treat each other.

1:04:37So I think we can learn a lot from the natural world and I think the fact that you’re putting out a podcast that asks really important questions and not… doing it in a way that makes it inaccessible just asking regular joe blow bald tattooed maori men who don’t know anything about science to be on the podcast invites the idea that we all have a voice and we have something to contribute to the conversation so i just want to thank you for having me on your podcast um and um it’s a pleasure yeah it’s been really cool no it’s great because actually the idea of science behind the glass is like a hearing the voices behind science and science is not only these scientific rigorous researchers that are in the lab it’s just everyone like you making science possible through connecting through nature the way of thinking the way of seeing nature together the way of how we can improve their other way of knowledge that we can incorporate and we don’t have any idea about it.

1:05:39About, for example, the cinematographers, artists that just connect nature in a different way, in a different concept, but everything comes together in the same, you know, in the same concept, in the same place. So thank you, Tuareg. It has been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. I’m hoping we get together for some arepas, some arepas at some point in the near future. We make Science Behind the Glass because we want to show you the people who are changing the world.

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1:07:12This episode was made possible by Daniel Esguerra and me, Linda Hernandez. Original music by our colleague and friend, Bernardo Aguila. And with a super powerful help behind the scenes and sometimes as a host, Rafael Yordan. See you next time.