[cross-posted on Substack]

I spent two months in New Zealand studying the "ethics of inclusion" and Māori philosophy at the University of Auckland. Here are a few things I learned from my experience, highlighted in my annotated bibliography.

The obvious: As Westerners we are under the conception that what we do in science and what we do in academia converges on the objective truth. This leaves no space for other epistemologies. For example, science is assumed to be universalizing and objective, that we are "measuring" a world that transcends cultural standpoints. However, science is a created ideology that has expanded via the violent history of imperialism. Interestingly, Māori live in practice what our science does with instruments, since they are sensitive to the environment and its changes. But they will never see it as "measuring" the environment for some (human-centered) goal; the relation is co-existence. Given the history of scientific research, science is seen as a threat to the Māori, since scientific research does not help them and is merely a mark of the colonizing society. 

The tendency for Westerners to say "I think we should include everyone in academia" dismisses knowledge systems that are exclusionary by nature. There is a hierarchy of knowledge in Māori communities. It also dismisses knowledge systems that were forced to be exclusionary in history. Māori resisted colonialism by excluding Westerners from their lands, thus protecting their epistemologies. 

Inclusion is not the gift of the West, but is a product of universality in a knowledge system that will not accept, historically, other ways of knowing. It is not "here, have some opportunities to conduct objective science," but "we will colonize you and prevent you from diverging from our correct epistemology, and impress our universal idealism onto your communities." 

From the bib: 

"Knowledge for Māori is exclusive and non-universalizing (knowledge was never meant to be universally available); elders are trusted with esoteric knowledge that connects to the future and past. In addition, knowledge of the West is inclusive merely based on spreading the illusion that the West got things right and they must universalize; the only reason the West is inclusive is because there is a need for imperialism and, for example, capitalist market expansion. It is not a crime, then, to say that Māori are exclusive, either in the basics of their epistemology or in the formation of their necessary resistance. For these reasons, Māori view researchers as attempting to steal knowledge, since research has failed to improve their conditions. Researchers, for example, should be prepared to help these communities and build lifelong connections with them."

Further: 

"[Indigenous] projects will not be attempting to break into Western centricity. Western epistemology and Western agents should not look to ‘include’ (as in subsume) indigenous knowledges in their framework, but should accept and include other ways of knowing, indigenous struggles, and histories as part of expanding their moral circles of acceptance. This also results in accepting that Western agents will not know (e.g. that researchers do not have a right to know, the Western notion that agents ought to have an unrestricted access to the truth via education does not mean the same thing in indigenous cultures)."

In theory: The nature of the oppressed vs. oppressors is a mutual one. The oppressors depend on the oppressed for their identities in the same way that the oppressed must recognized the actions of the oppressors as being oppressive. This is probably word salad to indigenous communities. As students in universities we must be wary of establishing theories that are overly technical because the resistance for indigenous groups is natural and pre-theoretic. 

"[The] oppressor gets their identity from the oppressed, which may raise contradictions in the nature of resistance. This is theory, and assumes that resistance does not already happen naturally, which shows the limits of theory as being potentially ad hoc." 

Theory here is probably just for the benefit of the university. 

Theorizing and research not only take place in a history of imperialism but are detached by the real, present, ongoing struggles of indigenous peoples. Research is thus not done on behalf of mankind — to benefit mankind — but instead reinforces dominant hierarchies and power structures if the researchers are not careful to limit their universalizing tendencies: 

"Research is liberation in that benefits must not go to mankind (which is an illusion, as mankind often equals private stakeholders or investors in the results), but to indigenous communities. These projects must be chosen by these communities as part of self-determination, and must be subsumed into their knowledge systems if the outcome of the research is knowledge. This must be done by both activists and researchers; in a colonial context there is often no distinction."

Finally, in the most practical context, acceptance epistemology utilizes DEI. DEI initiatives often fail when they, ironically, reinforce "tokenism" or quota systems (e.g. "15 people must be black in this group"), even if this itself is capitalist logic that would benefit the system.

This could mean protest movements that recognize the history of settler violence. The Treaty of Waitangi has been continuously breached by conservative forces in the New Zealand government. It is important to recognize the practices that continue to dishonor Māori voices. 

A challenge to those wishing to embrace genuine inclusion:

"...dominant groups can expand their moral circle of acceptance; while there are many issues of DEI, there is only one moral circle for individuals to expand, so choosing DEI movements that are foreign to one’s experience can help in overcoming the biases inherited by the status quo’s exclusionary ideology."

What did I learn from the Māori? I tried to learn the philosophy, and there were a few helpful analogies between the opposing knowledge systems. My two favorites: (1) I think Māori comes from a place of deep knowing, a deep understanding of one's relation with others where this relation is indistinguishable from the self. In Western epistemology, the agent has to theorize morals from an unknowing view (e.g. what will I do given I know 'X' about the world, and given there is so much more to know?). 

For Rawls, if we imagined that we had to build a society from scratch without knowing our position within the society, we would build one with equality in mind merely because all agents could be at a disadvantage. This is inherently transactional, individualistic, and agentic, or "do the right thing because you could be at a disadvantage if you did not." Māori resist this thinking entirely because knowing, relationships, and duties are implied by being situated in the community, or, for example, by being connected to ancestors/spirits. 

(2) Time and space are the same for the Māori, there is no distinction. Time is linear and space is separate in the West. There might be a difference in fundamental conscious representations of the world between the West and indigenous epistemologies.

I was limited in my learning because Māori knowledge is situated: It’s exclusionary by nature, as all epistemologies are. It’s just an illusion that Western epistemology is naturally universalizing. It's universalizing because we colonized the world.