“We’d like to see Māori developing in the space sciences and engineering, but with whakaaro Māori embedded in their thought processes, carrying this knowledge, and knowing that we have an inherent responsibility to space, to the protection of Ranginui.” Dr Pauline Harris, deputy director (Māori) of the MacDiarmid Institute, which specialises in materials science and nanotechnology. (Photo by Mark Coote.)

There aren’t many astrophysicists around who are also experts in Māori astronomy and the maramataka (the Māori lunar calendar). That rare person is Dr Pauline Harris, the deputy director (Māori) of the MacDiarmid Institute. Pauline played a role in getting Matariki recognised as a public holiday, and, not surprisingly, she has no time for those who belittle mātauranga Māori. As she tells Dale in this kōrero, she also wants to see Māori in space, and believes “a great reconnection” is the way forward for humanity.

Tēnā koe, Pauline. You’re the first Māori astrophysicist I’ve ever interviewed — in fact, you’re the first astrophysicist I’ve interviewed, full-stop. So, it’s a privilege to have a yarn with you. I always start with names and connections. Would you talk to us about your connections and the whānau?

I was brought up in Porirua and Paraparaumu, but our whānau whakapapa to Māhia and Nūhaka in Hawke’s Bay. Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa, and Ngāti Rakaipaaka are my iwi. Our maunga is Te Ara-a-Paikea, and our marae are Te Rākātoa and Ruawharo.

My mum, Jean Whaanga, was a stay-at-home mum. She was an amazing mother. She really instilled a strong belief in us that we could do anything. And she was always there.

My birth dad, Bill Harris, died when I was four years old. He was from Wales. My dad who brought me up is from Leven in Scotland. His name is Billy Powell, and he was a wharfie and a super-duper committed union guy. He used to lead the union at the Wellington wharf, so we’re wharfies’ kids. That’s what we got called when we were young.

And he was just an amazing provider. He made sure that we all had good clothes, we all had food. We didn’t have flash holidays, because you don’t need that, but we were always well looked after and had a good, safe home environment.

I’m one of six children from my mum. I’m the second youngest. I’ve got a little sister, Kirsty Doyle, who works with me on all my mahi that I do around space and education. Some of the other siblings are mechanics, and some of them work in government. And I’ve also got another sister in Canada who’s First Nations. I just connected with her, and she’s through my birth father, who had her before he came to New Zealand.

I also have a daughter, Te Paea Whaanga, who’s 22.

Pauline’s mother, Jean Whaanga, and father, Bill Harris, who died when she was four.

And so schooling. Where did that happen for you?

I started off at Porirua East Primary. When we moved to Paraparaumu, I went to Paraparaumu Primary, then we went to Kāpiti College. I had some great teachers there. I had an awesome physics teacher and an awesome mathematics teacher, and we had great Māori teachers, too. It’s really important to have supportive teachers — I was really lucky.

My physics teacher was Athol Binns. He was just brilliant. He used to set up experiments and teach us how electricity flowed and how transformers worked and stuff like that. Mr Mill was our maths teacher. I still remember him saying that he wanted me to be first in mathematics. They had that strong belief, and they made you feel like you could achieve.

I was one of the top students when I started. I think I got the top academic and sporting award when I was in the third form. Then I discovered boys [laughs], and that led to an academic decline. But I still managed to get through high school, and then I ended up going to university to do physics, and did well.

In the whānau backyard at Paraparaumu, in the 1980s. Pauline (back right), with dad Billy Powell, mum Jean, brothers Michael and Steven Harris, and youngest sister Kirsty Doyle. Missing are Koa and Simon.

Pauline and her mum: “She really instilled a strong belief in us that we could do anything. And she was always there.”

How was it that you took a shine to physics, when a lot of other students don’t grasp it at all? Was it to do with the enthusiasm that your kaiako (teacher) displayed towards the kaupapa?

Yeah, the enthusiasm of the kaiako. But before that, I used to have this fascination with science fiction. I loved it. Star Trek with Captain Kirk, right? And then, later on, Voyager, and then Star Wars as well.

I was fascinated by science, but I was really good at mathematics. We used to have to stand up and do our times tables, and it was a competition as to who could be the best. I just took a shine to maths. Physics was a natural progression because it’s quite mathematical. And then, my love of science fiction led me to astronomy.

Heaps of our people love astronomy now, right? And so I went down the physics pathway to astrophysics. That was where I really wanted to go, and cosmology as well. I wanted to understand the night sky and how the universe forms, how stars are made, what planets are, and the difference between them.

I just need to clarify something, Pauline, because you use the terms astronomy and cosmology, and then we’ve got astrology in the middle of it all. And some people get confused because astrology is horoscopes, is it not?

Yes, astrology is associated with horoscopes, but back in the early days, they didn’t separate those things. When they started developing the more mathematical stuff, it was always entwined with astrology and foreseeing things in the future. With cosmology, you’re talking about the formation of the universe. In the western paradigm, it’s the Big Bang type stuff, and in our Māori cosmology, we’ve got Te Kore (the great nothingness), Te Pō (perpetual night), and stuff like that. I call all of it cosmology.

What do you think about the Genesis story as it marries up with global thinking about the origins of the world? I mean, our narrative starts with Te Kore, and then the separation of Rangi and Papa. Some would discredit that as a fable or myth or something quaint, but when tested, do you say, well, that’s as feasible as other narratives about the origins of the universe?

Every religion has its belief about how the universe formed, right? And then you’ve got the western science view of how the universe was formed. Some people will walk with two beliefs, and they will merge them and reconcile them in a way that works for them.

But what I don’t like is when people are dismissive about other people’s belief systems. I think that shows a high level of arrogance. I’m talking mostly about people who have a western perspective. It annoys me when people dismiss each other’s beliefs, when actually it’s just increasing the richness of knowledge.

“Exploration of space is completely natural for us. But I also want to ensure that we have this whakaaro Māori. That we take our beliefs with us.” Pauline with a piece of a meteorite.

Let’s go back to your university years. Obviously, you had the marks and some supportive teachers and colleagues around you. You studied astrophysics and earned a PhD. Talk with us about varsity and delving deep into concepts that most of us never get a chance to visit.

It comes from wanting to understand the universe. And this revitalisation of Māori astronomy that we’re seeing now comes from the same motivation — they want to understand the universe.

When I was at university, we didn’t have that awareness of Māori astronomy. I do have to say, though, I always had a picture of Matariki next to my bed when I was growing up. I found it in National Geographic. And I hope I owned that magazine, because I ripped the page out and put it on my wall, not knowing it would become really important to me later in life.

University was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. I still had some doubts about my abilities, but I also had a lot of encouragement from my cohort, who were just normal kids like me, who had that interest. I knew I wanted to do physics, and I wanted to do mathematics, and then I tried to do computer science, which I realised I’m not very good at.

I was at Victoria University, and they were promoting interest in what’s called solid state physics. It’s looking at how materials are formed. I ended up going to Industrial Research Limited, which was one of the old Crown Research Institutes, and doing an internship there, and I made conductive polymers, which is the stuff that Alan MacDiarmid won his Nobel Prize for. I’m at the MacDiarmid Institute now.

Anyway, after the internship, I ended up going overseas. I was going out with a musician at the time, and I went on tour with them, and then realised: “Oh, I’d better go and do what I actually dreamed about doing.” So I wrote to Canterbury University and asked them if I could come down there and start learning cosmology. I wanted to do a PhD in cosmology.

So I went down there and started doing my master’s on dark matter. There’s stuff called dark matter that they think makes up most of the universe. I got a first-class master’s. It was around how the universe formed and how dark matter gathered together, which is supposed to be the seeds of forming galaxies. I was supervised by a new lecturer, Professor Jenni Adams. She wasn’t much older than me, and she’s from Christchurch. For my PhD, she said to me: “What about neutrinos? You want to do a neutrino project?” I was like: “Yeah, okay, that sounds pretty cool.”

That project was around searching for very small particles called neutrinos that potentially could originate from some of the biggest explosions in the universe, which we observe in other galaxies. And when they travel here, they have a small chance of banging into other atoms, and they create a signal we can listen to. That signal is in the form of radio waves, so these little signals come from these powerful little particles coming from other galaxies.

Some of the members of the Māori working group on aerospace, which first came together to advise the government on aerospace strategy. Since then, it has produced a report on Māori aerospace aims, aspirations, opportunities, and issues. From left: Leo Watson, Graeme Everton (Pauline’s whaiāipo, who passed away early last year), Kirsty Doyle (co-founder of Ara ki te Taumata), Pauline, Harry Burkhardt, Mahi Paurini.

You must have some pretty interesting dinner conversations with your colleagues. We’ve got the western model of the origins of life, but we also have a Māori narrative, as many other First Nations peoples do as well. I know you’re an advocate for our maramataka and our bank of mātauranga and knowledge. When did you embark on a journey of discovery that helps to speak to both schools of thought — and what did you see were the benefits in trying to merge the two?

I think when you come from a different cultural background with different knowledge, you have a different way of looking at things. And that can be really powerful.

When we’re doing western science, they usually try and isolate the thing that we’re studying. A lot of the time, they don’t look at how that thing is connected to everything else. Whereas, in mātauranga, we would look at the connection to the sun, to the stars, to the forest, the oceans, the weather and to the animals, insects and plants, like the kina, tuna, pohutukawa or harakeke. And, of course, to our practices. That’s whakapapa, right? The whole chain of interaction that occurs from the celestial down to your own activity.

In the western system, they wouldn’t see that, because what they’re concentrating on is how that particular thing is behaving at a certain temperature or humidity or in a certain gas. Or how is that animal behaving at a certain time of the year or in Gregorian time?

In mātauranga, we would connect everything wider, and I think that’s where the richness is. Because when we concentrate too much on one particular smaller element, we can lose the bigger picture of what’s really happening around us.

I’m curious about how your commentary on Māori concepts of interrelationships, as you’ve just touched on, might have impacted others on a purely western scientific pathway. Does it compromise their impression of you? Are you sort of no longer in their western science club?

There’s a certain section within the sciences where people understand that the connections are important. They’ve got more of an open mind. They understand what we’re talking about and take the time to talk to us, and they are interested in engaging.

On the other hand, you’ve got the ones who belittle mātauranga Māori and don’t value it, but who, at the same time, have no understanding of Māori knowledge. It’s ridiculous because they are not the experts at all. You need to be someone who actually understands our Māori knowledge to make comments on it — you know, be an authority on it.

I don’t even bother engaging in those arguments anymore because it’s just hōhā, and we’ve got to get on with our own stuff. But those scientists who want to engage will engage, and they get it.

At NASA in 2024, to develop a relationship and project around space-based earth observations and the maramataka. Pictured at NASA’s Ames research centre, visiting the Indigenous Peoples Initiative, which aims to build relationships between scientists and Indigenous communities.

We’ve got Māori who are interested in space exploration, to go where no man has gone before, as the Star Trek saying goes, and an opportunity to create pathways for our young people to be even more investigative than we’ve had the chance to be. What do you sense the next step from a Māori perspective could be?

I’d like to see the mātauranga Māori around our astronomical knowledge developed to a high level. And it’s happening. I’ve been to quite a number of Matariki celebrations around Aotearoa and seen people developing their own karakia, doing their rituals and ceremonies that are relevant to their own iwi and hapū. And that is amazing, and it’s exciting, seeing them elevate their knowledge from their iwi and hapū perspective. That’s what we wanted when we set up the Matariki Puanga holiday.

And then we also have those who are currently at university. We’d like to see Māori developing in the space sciences and engineering, but with whakaaro Māori embedded in their thought processes, carrying this knowledge, and knowing that we have an inherent responsibility to space, to the protection of Ranginui.

We’re so familiar with the protection of Papatūānuku, but the protection of Ranginui is really important too. Because there’s now so much debris and rubbish out there from humans, and people are planning to go out there and become tourists, wanting their Instagram photos. And then there’s all the unnecessary technology that might go up there as well.

Space ethics is an area that I hope our people will go into, and then also exploration. Some of our people want to go to the moon, or they want to go into space. I know Māori who want to go to Mars. That exploration of space is completely natural for us. But I also want to ensure that we have this whakaaro Māori — that we take our beliefs with us.

Pauline and her sister Kirsty, visiting Bluff to talk to communities about Matariki.

Is there some message you’d like to leave our E-Tangata readers with?

Connection to the environment. That’s the message. That connection or reconnection is something that I think all of humanity needs to pursue now. That’s a concept I’ve been trying to get some momentum around: that there needs to be a great reconnection to the taiao around us, to the environment, our ecological systems, our sky, our space, everything, to ensure its protection. That we aren’t being greedy and taking up too much space, and that there are enough resources and enough places for other beings to thrive and to be present in the world.

When you’re flying, you can look out the window and realise how much space humans have taken up. And now we’re trying to go into the ocean, and mine it. We’re going into another realm, and we’ve already polluted it.

I hope we humans will grow our understanding and widen our eyes to see that we need to do something, and recloaking Papatūānuku is a start. That’s what we should be doing. And focusing on keeping her warm, and preserving environments for other beings, other species.

And also, when we look up, making sure that we don’t make the same mistake up there, and ensuring the health and wellbeing and protection of Ranginui as well.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

E-Tangata, 2025