Rocket Lab and Mātauranga Māori

Rocket Lab is an aerospace manufacturer and satellite launch service provider. The company was founded in 2006 by New Zealand engineer Peter Beck. They are now an American owned company with a New Zealand based subsidiary.

On the face of things Rocket Lab incorporates mātauranga Māori into their business strategies, “Rocket Lab actually embraces the Māori culture, and they want all of their 220 staff to feel that culture too and so we welcome them onto our traditional meeting places at the marae with a pōwhiri (welcome ceremony), where they then become part of the Onenui family.” (New Zealand Story, n.d.)

However, in May of this year, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) ordered Rocket Lab to pay $98,000 to a former employee for unfair dismissal. In a scathing report, the ERA stated that “it was a clear example of a company intentionally abusing its power to cause detriment to an employee.” (RNZ, 2021) This is a large contrast to the values claimed within the NZ story article. This is not an isolated incident, employee reviews through the website glassdoor and reporting on the workplace toxicity by Business Desk shed more light on the issues. “It’s really good work, but there’s a high price to pay working there. You get paid as little as possible and [get] extracted as much out of you as possible.” (Burrell, 2021b) They are ignoring the importance of manakitanga by forcing their employees to work in high-pressure environments with long hours resulting in the burn-out of many of their employees.

An element of sustainability that Rocket Lab is trying to address is the issue of space junk. The most notable example of this is the partnership between Rocket Lab and Aurora Propulsion Technologies. They will be launching a satellite later this year aimed at testing their propulsion devices and plasma brakes and their ability to provide effective propulsion and deorbiting capabilities for small satellites. This relates back to the concept of kaitiakitanga, by trying to tackle this big issue of space junk Rocket Lab are being kaitiaki of space.

Some members of the Māhia community feel that Rocket Lab is not using mātauranga Māori in their practices. Sonya Smith of Ngāti Rakaipaaka hapū said that the community was promised the facility would not be used for military purposes. (Kitchin, 2021) However, about 30% of Rocket Lab’s business is for US defence agencies and at least 13 launches from Māhia have carried payloads for US military or intelligence agencies. (Satherley, 2021) The community is concerned about the environmental impacts that Rocket Lab’s will cause and the impacts on mahinga kai and pātaka kai. As well as concerns about access to urupā and wāhi tapu (Tuiono, 2021)

It is often said that actions speak louder than words and I would argue in this case that Rocket Lab’s actions speak volumes about the distinct lack of Mātauranga Māori being incorporated within the company.

There is such little information on the use of mātauranga Māori within Rocket Lab that it is hard to define an approach and apply it to my chosen industry for this paper, the mushroom industry. I can speak broadly and say that kaitiakitanga should be applied to all industries, restoring the environment is the most important issue of our time and should be taken seriously. If the mushroom industry took kaitiakitanga seriously they would be discontinuing the use of peat as a casing substrate as well as changing their packaging away from single-use plastics. Just these two changes alone would dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the mushroom industry. (Rogers, 2020, p. 66)

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