Does the teaching of indigenous knowledge need to be examined?

Also worth noting that the existence of the 'modern university' is a form of cultural hegemony. The 'university' originated in the Middle East / Mediterranean area as a particular form of pedagogy very different from, say, what a Chinese, sub-Saharan African or Amerindian model might look like. Now we have the 'modern university', that is, one driven by finance and economics rather than by blue skies research, and that is founded even more narrowly on an Anglo-Saxon model of capiitalism. Had the Aztecs conquered Europe, rather than the other way around, or had the Chinese persisted with the voyages of Zheng He and colonised the Americas, what then might European or North American universities look like?

The irony is that the Maori themselves colonised NZ and committed genocide against the original inhabitants, exterminated all land mammals and destroyed a third of its forest land. And as for the Chinese, they teach science the same way it has been taught in the west and many developed societies: math, physics, chemistry, biology etc. That has led to an astounding transformation of the country in the past 40 years. Let’s hope those condemning “science” can appreciate the enormous benefits it has brought them. I doubt too many would return to indigenous lifestyles, which were often short and brutal.

It is a shame that New Zealand seems to want to isolate itself from the global community. Universities are about the acquisition and transmission of knowledge. That becomes much more difficult if they start to speak in a language that few people outside a particular culture know (or are interested in). Like it or not, English is the main medium of communication across the world and it is likely to remain so, at least for the time being.