Journal article

This article has been inspired by “Why Isn’t My Professor Māori?” (McAllister et al., 2019), an article which appeared in this journal and addressed the under-representation of, and inequities facing, Māori academic staff in universities in Aotearoa New Zealand. I present some personal reflections and raise some questions with regard to academics with Māori heritage but who struggle to identify as Māori.

This paper explores how we, three wāhine Māori, are moving through citational practice—who, how, and why we cite. Stemming from a refusal to recirculate settler colonial ideologies in doctoral research, we consider what it means to cite as Māori. In centring whakapapa, we conceptualise citations as extensions of our relational world and as a way we can acknowledge and nurture the intergenerational relationships that constitute who we are, and how we come to know. Citation is an expression of whanaungatanga.

The importance of early childhood education programmes has been widely established by researchers, but there has been little research on the outcomes of early childhood Kaupapa Māori educational initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand. The aim of the research project reported here, He Piki Raukura, was to define Māori child behaviour constructs that may underlie positive Māori child development. We conducted in-depth interviews with two experts and 21 whānau participating in a Kaupapa Māori early years programme in Taranaki.

Kaupapa Māori early years provision (KM-EYP) is often understood as a critical site for Māori cultural revitalisation, where a foundation for the educational success and lifelong wellbeing of tamariki Māori is laid. Given its importance, the Tangi te Kawekaweā study sought to identify and examine barriers and facilitators of whānau engagement in KM-EYP. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with individual whānau members (n = 19) and whānau groups (n = 5) enrolled in one centre for KM-EYP, and with expert informants (n = 10). This paper reports on the insights gained.

For Indigenous peoples, and Māori specifically, storytelling and oral history are crucial to the survival of our collective identities, culture and language. Retold across generations, our stories are often explicit and interwoven narratives of personal and collective memories. Drawing on Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor’s (2009) concept of “survivance stories”, this article explores a set of three oral history narratives of kaumātua from Ngāti Tiipa, one of the 33 iwi and hapū of the Waikato-Tainui confederation.

For Indigenous peoples, and Māori specifically, storytelling and oral history are crucial to the survival of our collective identities, culture and language. Retold across generations, our stories are often explicit and interwoven narratives of personal and collective memories. Drawing on Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor’s (2009) concept of “survivance stories”, this article explores a set of three oral history narratives of kaumātua from Ngāti Tiipa, one of the 33 iwi and hapū of the Waikato-Tainui confederation.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns in Aotearoa New Zealand have been a source of change, of uncertainty and of anxiety. The ways in which we engage with each other as Indigenous people have had to change drastically and suddenly; our ways of being, of sharing space, of being present, have all had to be adjusted. For Indigenous postgraduate students, COVID-19 and lockdowns have meant a re-shaping and re-thinking of how we come together as a community that supports each other within Westernised institutions and along our academic and research journeys.