This comment draws on Paul Tapsell’s work on taonga to help make explicit some of what I take to be working behind Dan Hikuroa’s writings on taniwha and thus Justine Kingsbury’s Taniwha project. I detail some of the insights that a more detailed and complex account of taniwha—one that is framed around taniwha and taonga relationships—can provide. I contend that understanding taniwha in relation to taonga helps to highlight the way that Kingsbury’s account necessarily lacks elements essential to taniwha themselves (...) and essential to their relationships with taonga. On the back of this contention, one conclusion we come to is that Kingsbury merely offers us a way of taking some aspects of taniwha seriously. Another, and perhaps more important conclusion, is that our discussion of taniwha and taonga provides us with a way to recast Kingsbury’s project—allowing us to take as our focus (and thereby value) relationships between taniwha, taonga, and tangata. One upshot is a framework for thinking about what is required to enable deeper and harder conversations later on that are framed in relational terms too. This, I argue, might not only be a more fruitful approach, but one more in line with Kingsbury’s aspirations. (shrink)

In “Taking Taniwha seriously,” Justine Kingsbury proposes a way for taniwha pūrākau—traditional narratives about taniwha—to be taken seriously by non-Māori, which is one step towards respecting te ao Māori—the Māori world view. Taniwha are powerful water creatures who act deliberately to protect and sometimes punish humans. So characterised, there is an obvious obstacle to those who wish to respect te ao Māori but who are sceptical about the existence of supernatural entities. Kingsbury proposes a way to take taniwha discourse seriously, (...) but not literally. I agree that her view is realist, and that it overcomes the obstacle noted above. I argue in this paper that her approach ought to be considered an instance of what I call neutral realism, and that when we characterise it this way, we can see precisely how it enables the sort of intercultural respect that she seeks. (shrink)

Achieving genuine engagement and understanding between communities with radically divergent worldviews is challenging. If there is no common ground on which to stand and have a discussion, the likely outcomes of an apparent intercultural disagreement are a stalemate, or the (sometimes colonialist) imposition of a single worldview, or a kind of relativistic tolerance that falls short of genuine engagement. In this paper, we suggest a way forward that takes as its starting point the philosophical discussion of deep disagreement, using the (...) example of taniwha (powerful water beings that must be treated with respect) to outline a strategy for building intercultural understanding and enabling constructive intercultural dialogue. (shrink)