This week it was a huge pleasure to be able to welcome Carl Mika, Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies from Aotearoa, the country now known as New Zealand. As you can probably guess from the title of this episode, this conversation with Carl went pretty deep pretty quickly! That's because underlying the most apparently basic concepts like learning or logic that people use all the time are some pretty fundamental assumptions about the way the world is. And they're certainly not universal to all humans. So what does educating our young people in how to read their worlds mean in this case?
Carl Mika is from the Tuhourangi iwi and is Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies, and Head of School of Aotahi: School of Māori and Indigenous Studies, University of Canterbury. His published work includes Indigenous Education and the Metaphysics of Presence was published in 2017, Routledge), along with many articles and chapters, on the issues of colonisation and reductionism; Māori concepts of nothingness and darkness in response to an Enlightenment focus on clarity; mātauranga Māori and science. Carl teaches and researches in educational philosophy and mātauranga Māori, the law, and global studies, as well as aspects of Western philosophy.
In 2024, Carl was awarded the University of Canterbury Research Medal. Also In 2024, he was recipient of the University of Canterbury Faculty of Arts Kairangahau Māori Award for research in Māori philosophies (both traditional and contemporary) and Māori methodologies. He is also a Fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA).