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).

While the terms racism and equity are increasingly commonly used, action that meaningfully addresses racism and eliminates inequities is less common. This programme seeks to uncover how commitments to equity and ending racism are undermined, ‘non-performative’ or symbolic only, and how they may need to be reconfigured in the context of Aotearoa to align with rangatiratanga. Understandings of racism and (in)equity are strongly shaped by contextual factors and dominant, frequently changing discourses.

Our tūpuna were experts in reading tohu o te taiao to live more attuned with the environment and gather kai at the optimal times. Their understanding of their own local taiao is recorded and woven throughout kōrero tuku iho. The maramataka is an example of kōrero tuku iho which provides a uniquely Māori way to record, organise and understand ngā tohu o te taiao.

This project forms the first phase of a broader initiative to create guidelines to help direct Rainbow Organisations (RO) in ensuring their work is successful in supporting the long-term flourishing of rangatahi takatāpui. 

Ngaati Koroki Kahukura are kaitiaki of lands and waters that span from their ancestral mountain, Maungatautari, to their tupuna awa, Waikato, including areas of national significance such as Cambridge (Te Oko Horoi a Taawhiao) and Karaapiro, the site of the last intra-iwi battle of Taumata Wiiwii in the 1800s.

Indigenous people will be more severely affected by global climate change than other populations. Despite  increasing awareness of these inequities, national and global responses to climate change often fail to address issues of specific concern to Indigenous peoples and tend to overlook the potential contribution of Indigenous knowledges.

This research is at the cutting-edge of expanding legal research theory, methodology and legal knowledge in the development of a bijural legal system in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2021, Te Kōti Whenua Māori initiated a new tikanga-based dispute resolution process, in response to amendments to the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993.