L-R: Linita Manu'atu, Paul Reynolds and Mere Kepa want nothing to do with the DNA-sampling project. Picture / Kenny Rodger

L-R: Linita Manu'atu, Paul Reynolds and Mere Kepa want nothing to do with the DNA-sampling project. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Where are you from? Who are your people? To Maori, these are the first questions to ask a new acquaintance, much more interesting than banal inquiries about jobs or real estate.

Maori culture is infused with stories of movement and migration, exploration and settlement, and underpinning it is the greatest adventure story of all, how Aotearoa was discovered and settled by Kupe, an intrepid navigator from the Pacific homeland of Hawaiiki.

But now scientists want to step around the mythology and tell a different story, using the DNA of Maori and other indigenous people to work out how prehistoric humans spread around the world from the "true" home of Homo sapiens, Africa.

Many Maori do not want to hear that story.

National Geographic, in collaboration with computer giant IBM and a wealthy American family of philanthropists, is sponsoring the Genographic Project, a huge endeavour in which scientists all over the world will take DNA samples from 100,000 indigenous volunteers and explain how their ancient ancestors moved out of Africa up to 60,000 years ago and spread around the world.

The scientists want to show how all humans are related to one another, and promise the research will be a celebration of how humans conquered distance and danger to populate the earth.

Already, more than 50,000 intrigued people have paid up to US$126 ($184) for a self-sampling DNA kit and sent a saliva swab to National Geographic, which provides in return a confidential analysis of each participant's genetic history.

As soon as the scheme was announced in April, indigenous groups began objecting, and none more loudly than Maori.

We already know where we came from, thanks very much, they said, and what's in it for indigenous people? What is the point of challenging generations of oral history and spiritual belief? Why should we give you our blood and the genetic codes which make us unique, and how do we know you won't sell the information to pharmaceutical companies?

And most importantly of all, how can this "scientific proof" that we all came from Africa be used against us by the politicians - and the racists?

Science and faith have been in conflict since humans began questioning how things worked, and there is no greater guarantee of scientific immortality than being declared a heretic by the church.

Just ask Charles Darwin, whose name is still cursed by some Christians nearly 150 years after he published the theory that humans' real ancestors were probably much more hairy than Adam and Eve.

But in today's world of ethical research guidelines, scientists must anticipate and placate their critics before they even unpack the test-tubes. The problem now facing the Genographic Project is whether the sceptics can ever be persuaded.