Brown Bodies, White Coats: Postcolonialism, Maori women and science

Abstract

In Aotearoa New Zealand journeys of discovery and colonization were also scientific journeys that brought “Maori woman” under the intellectual control of the emerging “scientific” academy. This paper argues that the historical construction of “Maori woman” through the discourses of Enlightenment science continues to affect the constitution of the subjectivities of Maori women scientists today. The paper draws on a doctoral thesis that used literary historical techniques to investigate the imperial archives and feminist narrative interviews with 16 Maori women scientists to collect the research data. I explore the conditions by which the subject “Maori women scientist” emerges and how the Maori women experience these conditions in relation to how they see themselves. I conclude by arguing that the identity of “Maori woman scientist” appears to be “impossible fiction” due to the fragmented nature of the sign “Maori,” “woman,” and “scientist”, which can be “traced” to the historical construction of the signs.

The author wishes to thank Professor Sue Middleton (Chief Supervisor) and the students and staff of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga/The National Institute of Research Excellence for Maori Development and Advancement's Inaugural Seminar Series for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. The National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology.

2. Maori is the name given to the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

3. Beever and Greeson (1995) suggested that Maori knew the Polytrichum moss, and probably Polytrichadelphus as well, as “tetere-whete” and “totara”. Apparently the “totara” tree is not unlike the foliage of polytrichaceous mosses.

4. Now known as Te Papa Tongärewa.

5. A well-known New Zealand writer who has a Maori name but no Maori ancestry.

6. Name given to a white New Zealander.

7. The Crown Research Institutes are government funded scientific research institutes in New Zealand. There are eight of them.

8. All names are pseudonyms.

9. Ancestry.