We Know Our Stories
A reader sent me this infuriating item. It’s all too familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.
But now scientists want to step around the mythology and tell a different story, using the DNA of Maori and other indigenous people to work out how prehistoric humans spread around the world from the “true” home of Homo sapiens, Africa. Many Maori do not want to hear that story…As soon as the scheme was announced in April, indigenous groups began objecting, and none more loudly than Maori. We already know where we came from, thanks very much, they said, and what’s in it for indigenous people? What is the point of challenging generations of oral history and spiritual belief?
What is the point? Finding out what really happened as opposed to the story. It’s not written in stone anywhere that a story is invariably or necessarily preferable to a more accurate account.
Indigenous people already have their own answers, says Tongan educator Dr Linita Manu’atu, a senior lecturer at Auckland University of Technology.
“Stop dominating us. If they flip over to this side of the world, [they will see] we have our own ways of understanding the world. We can do our research in our own ways, and contribute that knowledge to the world,” Manu’atu says. “For Tongans, we were created in Tonga. We have gods, our own gods, which we created the same as the people of Israel. We have our own stories, but we are being told they’re not good enough.”
Says Tongan educator? She has a funny idea of education. Yeah, I know how I got where I am, too: Daffy Duck bought me at Reasonably Honest Dave’s for five cents and a plug of tobacco. That’s my story and better nobody tell me it’s not good enough, especially not some jumped-up geneticist. See? I’m an educator.
Australian Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell agrees. “We didn’t come from anywhere. We know that our Dreamtime stories tell us we were always here, in Australia. Can this be twisted to say we came from Africa and therefore we have fewer rights to our country than white people?”
No, it can only be twisted to say you came from Africa and therefore you have more rights to your country than white people. That makes just as much sense.
Marae worker and caregiver Mere Kepa, also a researcher at Auckland University, doesn’t buy Genographic’s stated hope of improving global understanding of indigenous concerns. “Just because you know you’re related to each other, is that going to stop the Queensland police belting the shit out of Aborigines?” Kepa asks. “This is scientific imperialism. As an academic I’m not opposed to learning, but I’m tired and exhausted of learning from Western scientists that I’m sad, bad and mad and so are all my whanau and hapu and iwi.”
As an academic Kepa is not opposed to learning?? Well you could have fooled me! That sure looks like opposition to learning to me. Blind, stubborn, stupid, ill-informed, catch-phrasey, trendy, dopy, grab-any-complaint-that-comes-to-mindy, head-in-the-sand opposition to learning.
But they’re not all absurd, I’m happy to say. (Postmodernism is everywhere – it’s like mildew. It just creeps in.
Maori Aucklander Mike Stevens, an anthropologist and iwi consultant who is on the board of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, is happy to volunteer for the project and says many Maori do not accept all oral traditions as literal truth anyway…”But I think it is something that can advance our knowledge. It needn’t destroy our faith.”…More knowledge is always empowering, says Manuka Henare, associate dean of Maori and Pacific Development at Auckland University’s business school…”If you give people the knowledge and understanding, you will find Maori people are as open-minded about these things as any others.”
Good, let’s hope someone gets busy doing that, so that the cries of scientific imperialism can fade away.
It was obscurantism like this (e.g., praying to various animist deities, holding up sewage and water supply works because you can’t mix the spirit of one water source with that of another)which converted me from being an enthusiastic multi-culturalist in the 1980s to a dedicated inheritor of the European enlightenment in its more sceptical forms in the 1990s.
Biculturalism or multiculturalism is often presented as an unchallengeable good in New Zealand and elsewhere, but it’s impossible to keep swallowing contradictory beliefs about true and false, right and wrong in the name of tolerance or respect.
As I think you (or someone in the comments) remarked a couple of posts ago, you can’t respect what is not respectable.
From the cited article:
>The greatest objection to this project, appropriately, is born of history. “Indigenous people aren’t stupid,” says Paul Reynolds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Auckland University-based National Centre of Research Excellence for Maori Development, Nga Pae o te Maramatanga.
“We’ve been here before. We’ve had centuries of exploitation by non-indigenous people. This is highly political. It’s race-based research, and therefore it can be manipulated and used for political benefit.
“This could link straight into what Don Brash wants to hear, that everybody comes from the same place, that we are all common and have common ancestors.”< Eh? It’s bad to contend that we all have common ancestors? For the tiny minority who don’t keep up with affairs in New Zealand, here’s some info about Don Brash:
http://www.thedailygrind.net/work/features/content.php?id=519_0_12_0_M8
Don’t worry, actually this is yet more support for the ‘Out of Africa’ theory. It graphically illustrates how the gene for outright stupidity has spread all around the world.
My dear, we have our hats.
Perhaps it would save time if every ethnic/cultural/religious group drew up a list of ‘Things we don’t want to know about’ and published it. That way researchers could know in advance which roads of scientific enquiry are blocked. Personally, I believe we were created by goblins from Mars and I want all space missions stopped now in case they prove otherwise.
David H – “It graphically illustrates how the gene for outright stupidity has spread all around the world.”
Alternatively, it was Frank Zappa, former West-Coast libertarian, jazz-rock fusion musician and latterly Czech Minister of Culture who said “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
Michael Mansell pretty much nails it in the sense that research on prehistory seems, to me, to be regarded as a threat to indigenous claims – as if the Maori treatment of the Moriori in any way justifies later colonialism! Of course it doesn’t.
But apparently that’s what people think, so you get this “We’ve always been here. Our Gods created us here. Our traditional knowledge is as good as your scientific one.” story – which in similar or somewhat weaker versions holds also among non-indigenous people. See the controversy over the (IMO well-established) Aryan invasion theory in India, or the way Basque nationalists may refer to genetics “proving” they’re the real Natives of Europe, etc. etc.
Anyway, I’m perfectly happy with people believing the Earth Mother had them sprout from the cabbage at the dawn of Creation – as long as no one confuses it with scientific research. So I’m very irked with so-called “academics” spouting off this kind of nonsense. One more symptom of the deterioration of higher education: Universities used (in many ways, except this one) as a battlefield for blatant identity politics. Disgusting.
“Personally, I believe we were created by goblins from Mars and I want all space missions stopped now in case they prove otherwise.”
You’d think that was a joke, wouldn’t you – but there is that woman in Russia who is suing NASA for that very reason. You just can’t make up anything outlandish enough that some fool somewhere is not doing it.
There is a lot of this going around, and sometimes it manages to derail actual research. The Kennewick man circus here in the Northwest is one example. The issue came down to whether or not this 9,000 y/o skeleton ws ancetral to Penutian-speakers in eastern Oregon. They wanted to claim him as an ancestor and prevent analysis of the bones. He may have turned out to have Salish or Wakashan descendants (wiped out by the Penutians)- oops; don’t go there.
Yeah – I was going to mention Kennewick guy in that comment. I didn’t because (you’ll laugh) I couldn’t think of the name ‘Kennewick’! I kept thinking Kennicott, which is the name of the main characters in Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. So I was thinking ‘Kenne, Kenne, Kenne – Kennewhat?’ And it was late and I had to go somewhere and I was tired, so I didn’t bother looking it up (it’s only discussed about fifty times on B&W, and in Why Truth Matters, so you’d think I’d remember). I think that’s kind of funny.
I forgot to mention one thing that irks me in the standard narratives. There is the assumption, and I slipped and said something similar myself, that these new settlements alwys involve some kind of extermination. they don’t have to. When(ever) the Penutian speakers moved into eastern Oregon, they may not have killed anyone. People may just have shifted languages. That is a form of “wiping out”, but not so melodramatic. It turns out that the Wintu, also Penutian, are believed to have entered California only about 1,000 years ago from eastern Oregon and Nevada, and to have expanded in the northern Central Valley, not so much by killing earlier people, but mostly by population increase – how Californian is that? – because they brought really efficient methods of using the salmon runs.
Funny thing about some of these patterns of new settlement. The new groups often ended up in the more marginal areas and the earlier people stayed in the nicer spots. For instance, the Chumash kept the Santa Barbara area, and the various Uto-Aztecan groups made do with what became LA. Ugh. And the pattern holds -look where the Okies ended up.
It’s the same issue with the Neanderthals, I think. No one really knows whether they were killed off, or simply absorbed via breeding. The evidence is ambiguous and there’s not all that much of it.
With the Neanderthals,the last I heard was that they think they died without mixing with modern humans, but I wonder. Why would modern Caucasians have so many Neanderthal features, such as larger than normal eyebrows, that don’t serve any special adaptive purpose? Neanderthals had big noses, supposedly as an adaptation to the cold. Siberia is colder than Europe, but modern Siberians have small noses and we are the ones with the big noses.
I think the question is indeed open.
OB, I presume you mean the astrologer complaining that the comet-smash would affect her trade. I remember all the talk that charts and things had to be revised after they called Sedna the newest planet. That must be a couple of years ago now. I obviously didn’t notice they’d demoted Sedna from planet status till the newest planet was announced again a few weeks back (so I must also have missed the order going out to revert to the old Sedna-less charts). What is hilarious is this dependence on the astronomers getting things right so that they can spout just any old nonsense based on it. I wonder if there is life out there sufficiently unintelligent that it tries to make predictions based on how our planet is aligned with the others. Or maybe they’ve just spotted Earth now and we’ve bollocksed up their horoscopes.
“I wonder if there is life out there sufficiently unintelligent that it tries to make predictions based on how our planet is aligned with the others.”
cackle, snort
Or maybe there’s life out there sufficiently unintelligent that it tries to make predictions based on how inaccurate our predictions are – or on how high we register on the Gull-o-meter – or on how long we stay on the newest diet – or on how much weight we gain after we abandon the newest diet – or on how many people commit mass suicide as a way to get to the planet where that unintelligent life is – or on how the sales of Kool-aid stack up against the sales of black sweat suits – or
“Australian Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell agrees. ‘We didn’t come from anywhere. We know that our Dreamtime stories tell us we were always here, in Australia.'”
This is completely silly for so many reasons obvious that it seems superfluous to comment. The most obvious:
* All humans can interbreed; they are not separate species so cannot have (non-supernatural) different origins.
* It is generally accepted in Australia (at least by most non-idegenous) that Australian Aborigines migrated here from somewhere else. No-one seriously uses this to argue that they have fewer rights (although it could be done). Genetic studies are not going to change this.
* Different groups of Australian Aboriginals have different “Dreamtime” stories (just as different religions do). They can’t all be right.
* Why should Australian Aboriginal “Dreamtime” stories have, or just have, pre-eminence in Australia?
“Different groups of Australian Aboriginals have different “Dreamtime” stories (just as different religions do). They can’t all be right.”
Sure they can. Just be very very careful where you go and whom you talk to. In fact don’t go anywhere and don’t talk to anyone outside your group. Easy peasy.
This issue led to a heated debate with a close friend, who took the position that to undermine the foundations of an ancient belief system, particularly the’Dreamtime’ myth, would damage the already precarious culture of the Australian Aboriginal people. When pressed on whether the same argument would hold for, say, Christian Right Creationists demanding a halt to research that threatened their deeply held beliefs, he denied that it would, but only on the grounds that Creationists are ‘assholes’ and aboriginals & Maoris are ‘groovy’. The guy’s not stupid (maybe read a little too much Castanada back in the day) and finally agreed that this was patronising nonsense based on a romanticised vision, although he did maintain that Maoris should have special treatment based on the grounds that ‘They’ve got fuck-off tattoos and do pissed off really well.’