Terre Satterfield
Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia

Debates about the Risks of Genetically Modified Organisms in the Maori World"
3:30 pm, Alumni 313A Lounge

Abstract: New Zealand’s HSNO Act (Hazardous Substances and New
Organisms Act) is rightly upheld as culturally progressive by virtue
of its insistence that ‘environmental impact’ be defined as physical,
social and cultural. However, recent heated debates among NZ’s Maori
population about the introduction of genetically modified organisms
have revealed the Act’s fault-lines: There exists no viable manner in
which to ‘assess’ cultural risks alongside physical ones. This paper
explores, in the context of this debate, just if and how one might
begin to think about ‘cultural risk’ -- particularly as concerns
potential harm and not retrospective measurement of impact. In
particular, it explores the multiple arguments brought to bear in the
highly public debate about whether or not GMOs violate core cultural
principles, institutions and resources. It examines how both local and
global discourses about science, bio-prospecting and treaty rights
traverse multiple contemporary and historical interpretations of
whakapapa and mauri. Whakapapa (akin to genealogy) is central because
it identifies an entity’s origins (from the gods), descent lines,
relationships to other entities (spiritual and physical) and uses.
All persons and [native] species are situated and constituted in
reference to whakapapa and thus can be located historically; genetic
engineering is regarded by some as a gross disruption of that location
in time and space. Mauri is central because it defines an entity’s
essence, it’s spiritual energy or life force. Unlike geneticists whom
posit that the string of amino acids that constitute a genetic code is
life’s essence, many argue that the mauri is the essence of --and
resides in -- all things and is itself given shape/identity by the hau
(its vitality or spark). How the mauri is treated determines whether
or not this new (genetically modified) entity will become a powerfully
negative or positive force.