Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates about Inside Knowledge in Maori Society

Indigenous peoples around the world are exploring indigenous epistemology with the aim to reassert the validity of their own ways of knowing and being. This assertion is taking place not only among indigenous scholars in the academy but it is also happening among people with little or no schooling. In this context, indigenous people often think of themselves as having "inside knowledge" or being '"inside knowledge." This raises the question whether being inside knowledge is a comprehensive frame forming subjectivity or whether indigenous actors are also active agents in the process of producing knowledge. In search for an answer to this question, I analyze an internal debate in a Maori community about the spiritual quality of water, which some Maori leaders were reconstructing in their struggle against an extension of water rights to a coal mining corporation. Following the ethnographic analysis, a plural conception of knowledge is proposed to allow for different ways of knowing.