“Kei whea rā he oranga mō taku iwi e”: A critical biography of Tuaiwa Hautai Rickard

PhD Researcher: Hineitimoana Greensill (Tainui, Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Porou), University of Auckland

Primary supervisor: Associate Professor Aroha Harris, University of Auckland

Project summary

Drawing on intergenerational mātauranga, personal engagements with whānau taonga and archival research, this critical biography of Tuaiwa Hautai Rickard explores the complex ecology of a Māori woman’s life by offering a multilayered reading of her words and shining a light on her political and intellectual thought. The research highlights her ideas and considers what they can teach us about whānau and hapū wellbeing and self-determination.

This project engages with, and expands on, existing biographical work on Māori lives in the twentieth century while also contributing to conversations about whānau archival research and Indigenous biography in Aotearoa New Zealand and other settler-colonial states. It also contributes, more broadly, to historical work on the Māori twentieth century, emphasising the intimacies of Indigenous collaborations both within and beyond the borders of the New Zealand nation state, and thus highlighting relationships that are often obscured from public view. 

Methodologically, the project explores the challenges of subjectivity in historical research, whakapapa and access to knowledge, and story sovereignty. The subsequent questions that unfold from this research make an important contribution to discourses about historical methods and methodologies, and provide ways of thinking about conducting research that may be particularly useful for other Māori postgraduate students.

This research also challenges traditional approaches to historical research by privileging intergenerational mātauranga, waiata and memory as legitimate forms of knowledge.