Dr Karyn Paringatai’s success celebrated.
Te Tumu lecturer, Dr Karyn Paringatai and Professor Harlene Haynes, Vice Chancellor of the University of Otago.
On Monday night, the Vice-Chancellor celebrated Te Tumu staff member, Dr Karyn Paringatai’s success, with an event attended by many people from within the university, including Te Tumu staff and students. See the Otago Bulletin story here.
Indigenising the Academy – performing Ngoi Pewhairangi’s “Whakarongo” in the University of Otago’s Council Chambers to celebrate the success of Dr Karyn Paringatai.
Karyn won New Zealand’s top tertiary teaching award recently in Wellington, the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, based on utilising the pre-contact Māori pedagogy of teaching in complete darkness, which has proved to be outstandingly successful in her performing arts paper, MAOR108 Waiata: Te Tīmatanga. Listen to the Radio NZ interview and Dunedin Television item in which Karyn explains her teaching practice.
Karyn has undertaken significant research to ensure that her teaching in the dark, and has just published on this ‘A Return to the “Dark Ages”’ in the journal Akoranga 10 (2014).
Just this week Karyn also employed the same methods in a guest lecture for the 900 students of MAOR102: Māori Society, showing that this pedagogy can be applied to more than just performing arts. She is planning to continue to use and develop “teaching in the dark” and publish more on this research.
Seminar Video: Killing Demons and Cultural Collisions
A Te Tumu Seminar by Megan Pōtiki, 16 July 2014.
“Killing Demons” is the title of a detailed account of tapu clearing activities that occurred at Ōtākou in 1865. The diary extract was written by H.K. Taiaroa. This account is an incredible example of a collision of fundamentally different religious beliefs. Christianity and Christian prayer meets one of the significant Māori demi gods.
New book on the value of the Māori Language
Te Tumu staff member, Associate Professor Poia Rewi and Professor Rāwinia Higgins of Te Kawa a Māui (Victoria University of Wellington) have released an edited collection, The Value of the Māori Language: Te Hua o te Reo Māori, with Huia Publishers. The book features 25 essays from an illustrious field of Māori commentators, responding to the question ‘What is the value of the Māori language?’ more than twenty five years after the passing of the Māori Language Act.
The book was launched recently in Wellington at an event attended by many of the big names of Māori-language education.
This publication is one output emerging from Poia and Rāwinia’s three-year project, Te Kura Reo – Waiora, research funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.
