Matakitenga project

Global climate change has been identified as the single greatest threat to human health.  Within this paradigm, indigenous knowledge systems shaped by generations of sustainable interactions with ecosystems, are being looked to for pathways to climate change mitigation and adaptation.  Mātauranga, the holistic and integrated knowledge system developed by the Indigenous Māori people of Aotearoa is no exception.   

Extensive international scholarship demonstrates Indigenous people are particularly and uniquely affected by historical trauma through colonisation. Specific acts of oppression that remain unaddressed often result in the intergenerational transfer of trauma and trauma responses. In Aotearoa New Zealand, one such act of oppression was the forced removal of Māori children from their families to be placed in a range of state and church managed institutions often for spurious reasons.

Project supervisor: Associate Professor Linda Te Aho

Institution: Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato

Project supervisors: Dr Tania Cliffe-Tautari & Dr Luke Fitzmaurice

Institution: Waipapa Taumata Rau

The teaching and development of a vibrant, dynamic, highly educated and sustainable Māori workforce operatingat the highest levels of tribal and government leadership and civic society, is crucial to driving positive economic, social and environmental transformation in Aotearoa. Current and future generations of Māori PhD students and graduates, Māori scholars and researchers, are needed to undertake excellent and transformative research, run research organisations and be change makers within their communities and New Zealand society more broadly.

This research programme will examine how we might envision an approach to placemaking that would result in outcomes that facilitate the expression of mātauranga Māori, tikanga, whānaungatanga and orangatanga in urban areas. The programme will do this by examining concrete innovations through a series of case studies. These examples will demonstrate the optimism that transformative urban activity brings in terms of the potential to redress the struggles of the past (Awatere et al. 2008; Harmsworth 2004).