Setting Aside the Master’s Tools: Developing Mātauranga Māori Models for Māori Economic Development

In the mid-1800s, Māori developed a successful model of economic development that reflected and integrated their culture, traditional knowledge, and ways of knowing in Māori society. Colonisation disestablished that model along with most aspects of Māori society. Now, after a century of hibernation, the challenge for Māori is to redevelop the Māori economy in a way that again reflects mātauranga Māori. There are a range of examples worldwide where non-Western models of doing business and operating an economy reflect and integrate a difference in culture. Several examples—Chinese, Japanese, and Muslim—are highlighted, showing how non-Western business and economic models thrive alongside predominant Western approaches. With more than a century of enforced cultural decline through colonisation, the Western models of capitalism, exploitation of natural resources, and the inexorable pursuit of economic growth pervade New Zealand and Māori business. Understanding that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 1984), the extra challenge for Māori is to reclaim mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) in the economic and business spheres as a basis for developing ‘new tools’—new business and economic principles, models, and practices grounded in mātauranga Māori.