Postgraduates Graduating
Te Tumu congratulates our postgraduate students who are graduating this December.
Doctor of Philosophy
Matani Fakatotua Schaaf
Supervisors: Dr. Paerau Warbrick, Prof. Michael Reilly (until 2012, Prof. Brendan Hokowhitu)
Matani Schaaf and Minister of Education, Hekia Parata.
Title: Motivation and Burnout in Professional Pasifiki Rugby Players
This thesis examined the participation motivation among professional Pasifiki rugby players. Dominated by Western theories and models, rugby participation research has overlooked the inclusion of a theory or model that is significant to Pasifiki peoples. This research identified what cultural factors exist, that motivate so many Pasifiki peoples to play rugby. This research also highlighted a mismatch between the lived realities of Pasifiki rugby players’ experiences of motivation and burnout, compared to the lived realities of Palāngi rugby players. The most notable outcome, was that Pasifiki rugby players’ experiences were dramatically intensified, by familial, cultural, spiritual and financial obligations; which manifested in burnout, mental illness, substance abuse, binge drinking and failed attempts at suicide.
Master of Indigenous Studies
Te Tumu also has two Master of Indigenous Studies (MIndS) students graduating.
Nurul Sultan, supervised by Dr Lyn Carter, researched “The Relevance of Indigenous Knowledge in Contemporary Research Methodologies”.
Nikki Walden (Taranaki, Te Āti Awa), supervised by Assoc Prof. Merata Kawharu, undertook her MIndS research on “Āhurutanga: the practice and application of a customary Māori principle within a Māori tertiary context. Mā te whakaharatau e tika ai.”
University of Winnipeg student’s blogpost on Otago
Anna Huard and pupils from te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ōtepoti.
Dunedin might be at the “bottom of the world” but we still have people prepared to make their way down here. One such person was Anna Huard, a second-year student in the University of Winnipeg’s MDP (Master’s in Development Practice) programme. While here Anna spent time at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ōtepoti, and with people from Te Tumu. Click here to read about her experiences at Otago from the “University of Winnipeg’s MDP students blogging from the field” site.
Paul Tapsell – Speaking at WAC8 Indigenous Plenary
Professor Tapsell
Te Tumu’s Professor Paul Tapsell spoke at the Indigenous Plenary at the huge Eighth World Archaeological Congress held in Kyoto, 28 August-2 September. He gave a Māori perspective on “Being Pre-Indigenous” at what was a larger discussion of archaeology, history, and heritage by indigenous people from around the globe. The talk (c.16 minutes) is now available on Youtube. Check it out. Paul teaches into Te Tumu’s Indigenous Development programme.
Kei te piki tonu a Gianna! Further success for Gianna!
I te tau nei, ka whakapōtaetia a Gianna Leoni mō tāna tohu kairangi. I tēnei tau hoki, kua mahi ia hei kairangahau, hei pūkenga mō Te Tumu, engari, kua riro i a ia he tūranga hou, hei kairangahau postdoc i raro i a Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. Ko tāna kaupapa rangahau, ko “Te Ōhanga o te Pīpīwharauroa – Expressing our Economic Aspirations”.
This year, Gianna Leoni graduated with her PhD. Also this year she has been working as a researcher and lecturer for Te Tumu, but she has gained a new position, that of a Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga postdoctoral fellow. Her research project is “Te Ōhanga o te Pīpīwharauroa – Expressing our Economic Aspirations”.
Mai i te tono a Tākuta Leoni:
“The aim of this research is to enhance the contemporary Māori language of economic development that reflects a kaupapa Māori way of doing business. It will include historical research of language use regarding economic activity and an examination of current language use in economic activities, [including case studies] with the main objective of reintroducing and/or developing appropriate language that expresses economic activity.
“This research will allow for kaupapa Māori values to be included in Māori businesses using vocabulary that has a whakaaro Māori, not just transliterations, and that encompasses the philosophy of trading in a Māori way. In order to truly align with kaupapa Māori values, and to get buy-in from the community, economic activity needs the opportunity to be expressed in te reo Māori in all areas (eg. Finance) that are relevant to the stakeholders.
“This research will also contribute to the revitalisation and maintenance of te reo Māori and is extremely significant as Māori reach the ‘post-settlement’ era of Treaty of Waitangi negotiations where there is an increasing amount of economic engagement by Māori organisations.
“This research project links to the theme Whai Rawa. It aims to contribute towards developing tools, theories and models that will add value and profitability to diverse Māori enterprises, businesses & communities. It will contribute to creating new understandings and approaches for effective governance of these entities.
“This project will also link to a previously established Whai Rawa project, The intergenerational reality for Māori Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME): Building resilience of Māori SMEs for the future. The exploration of Māori language as an expression of economic aspiration establishes a critical bridge to understanding the intergenerational reality of Māori SMEs today, and in the future”
Ka pai, Gianna!
Te Tumu Seminar
Me pēhea rā e ngāwari ai te ako reo Māori mō ngā pakeke? How can we make it easier for adults to learn te reo Māori? Come and listen to John Birnie talk about his doctoral research.
click to enlarge.
He rongo
Aroha mai! A belated roundup of Te Tumu research news.
Professor Poia Rewi
In July we were treated to Poia Rewi’s Inaugural Professorial Lecture, held to celebrate his ascension to this tūranga rangatira within the university. The title of his talk was “Hoka : Motivators of Time”, a tour alongside Poia as he recounted his own academic journey, and his ZePA model of developing positivity around the use of te reo Māori. This was well attended by Poia’s whānau, staff and students, as well as many from the community, and was capped off with haka, waiata and karakia. The lecture can now be viewed on ITunes U.
Sandra Spence
Dr Gianna Leoni
In July Te Tumu were privileged to host Professor Michael Harkin as a William Evans Fellow. Professor Harkin, a cultural anthropologist and inaugural editor of Ethnohistory, gave several talks: a public lecture “The Trump at the End of the World: Monsters and Marvels in our Parlous Age”, in which he brought his knowledge of societies past and present together, and a departmental seminar, “‘The Emotional Archive’: The case of Residential Schools in Canada”, in which he examined ‘the relative lack of negative narratives [he] elicited…during fieldwork in British Columbia in the 1980s–2000s’, while also exploring ‘various forms of social memory, proposing the notion of an “emotional archive” that contains non-narrative memory traces’.
It is always great when our students gain their postgraduate degrees, after months or years of working on, and writing up their research. We had three such students graduating this August: Sandra Spence (Pākehā) and Raaniera Te Whata (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau a Apanui, Airihi) with the Master of Indigenous Studies, and Gianna Leoni (Ngāti Kurī, Ngāti Takoto, Itariana) with a PhD.
Dr Lyn Carter supervised Sandra, whose research was on “Kāi Tahu Chinese Unions and Identity in Otago and Southland/Murihiku”; Associate Professor Merata Kāwharu supervised Rāniera (“Tautoro, tū te ao, tū te pō (The endurance of Tautoro heritage): Investigating challenges and opportunities”); Professor Poia Rewi and Associate Professor Lachy Paterson supervised Gianna (“Mā te Taki te Kāhui Ka Tau: Te Waiaro ki te Reo Māori i ngā Hinonga Kāwanatanga”) who wrote her thesis in te reo Māori. Gianna is teaching MAOR312: Te Māhuri 2 this semster.
The abstract of Gianna’s PhD. Click to enlarge.
He kauhau
Te Tumu’s newest PhD graduate will be presenting a seminar to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology this Thursday, 12pm. Ko te kaupapa te tuhi i tāna tuhinga kairangi i roto i te reo Māori; on writing a thesis in Māori. Koia kei a koe, Gianna.
Click to enlarge
Waitangi Evidence by Associate Professor Merata Kawharu
People sometimes wonder what “value” academic work may have, particularly with regard to Humanities research. We are lucky to have Associate Professor Merata Kawharu of the University of Otago’s Research and Enterprise Office as an adjunct Research Professor in Te Tumu. Merata’s achievements that benefit Māori are many. Her latest work has been working on behalf of her own people, Ngāti Rahiri and Ngāti Kawa of the Bay of Islands, preparing evidence on early Māori-Pākehā interactions, with particular relevance to land, and presenting it from a cultural and hapū perspective. As she states “This kōrero today serves not to repeat what historians have already covered. Instead, I take a different perspective, centralising arguments from a cultural values and community-centric orientation so that the extent of significant loss can start to be more fully appreciated.” Click here to read Merata’s Summary Brief of Evidence.
Student research in Te Tumu papers
It is always gratifying to see proactive student research within Te Tumu papers, and Semester 1 2016 has been no exception.
MAOR202 students research on reducing alcohol harm
This is the second year that students in MAOR202 (Māori and Tikanga) conducted research with the objective of developing tikanga-informed solutions to reduce alcohol harm. The students acted as consultants to the New Zealand Police who came to them at the beginning of the semester and explained the complex problem of alcohol. The students then spent the semester learning about the useful nature of tikanga and the research process. This culminated in 8 groups projects which ranged from a mobile phone app that promoted connectedness and collective responsibility to reduce sexual assaults to a camp that fostered a sense of belonging and self for at risk foster youth. The projects all worked towards preventative, strengths-based, proactive solutions. They presented their projects to representatives of the New Zealand Police at a small symposium hosted at Te Tumu, and in more detail in their written research reports. Suzanne Duncan teaches MAOR202.
MAOR308 students research Ngāi Tahu history for kapa haka compositions.
Students: “As an interlude, we’re going to sing ‘Kohikohia ngā rīwai’ as a play on the song from Mount Zion. Everyone knows the tune. It’ll be cool.” (The tune of “Tutira mai ngā iwi.”)
Lecturer: “Yeah that would be great except rīwai were introduced after European arrival.”
Students: “Oh. Ok we’ll change it to ‘Kohikohia ngā kūmara’ then.”
Lecturer: “Again that would be great except kūmara didn’t grow down south because it was too cold.”
Students: “Oh. Ummmm so what can we change it to?”
Lecturer: “Think about the local food supplies down here.”
[Blank looks on their faces.]
Students: “We’ve got it – Kohikohia ngā tuaki? Kohikohia ngā tītī?”
The above conversation with one group highlighted for them early on in the semester how important research was in creating an historically accurate composition, particularly given the theme they had chosen for their performance – an insight into Ngāi Tahu/Ōtākou Māori history.
MAOR 308 was offered for the first time this year. The aim of the paper was to give students the opportunity to work in groups to compose, choreograph and teach each other a haka, waiata or poi. Given the theme, and the fact that only two of the students whakapapa to Ngāi Tahu, the need for the students to research local histories was made clear very early on. Not only did the narrative of their compositions have to be correct but also the reo, the costumes and the choreography. I did not have much to teach them in terms of performance skills – they are all highly proficient performers – but what I could help develop was their research and language skills in this area.
MAOR308 students performing their own compositions.
Haka and waiata is how these students know how to best express themselves and because they were responsible for each item they were more invested in the performance than if they were simply performing something someone else had written for them. The results speak for themselves and the excitement they have created within the community of the potential of Māori performing arts to extend beyond the typical ‘bracket’ performance will have long-lasting effects. Dr Karyn Paringatai teaches MAOR308.
An account of the MAOR308 performance (and also that of MAOR108 students) can also be found at the Otago Connection.
MAOR427 students translate Māori letter from 1859.
The Hocken Collections is a magnificent cultural treasury and part of the university’s library system. Within its collections are a number of untranslated Māori-language manuscripts that many researchers are unable to read. MAOR427 (He Tuhituhinga) is a paper in which students read and analyse Māori-language historical texts, with all discussion and assessment done i roto i te reo Māori. One of the mahi was to transcribe and translate a 1859 14-sheet letter written by Te Rūnanga o Awataha to the Governor concerning Māori history in Bay of Plenty. The students were able to give their work back to the Hocken as a resource for future researchers. Assoc Prof Lachy Paterson teaches MAOR427.
The Otago Peninsula: A Unique Identity
It’s wonderful to see Te Tumu’s emerging scholars getting their research out to the world. Megan Pōtiki, one of our teaching staff and also undertaking doctoral studies, has just published an article on the Otago Peninsula in Shima: The International Journal of Research on Island Cultures. The full text of the article can be accessed here.
Ka taea te kī mō tēnei tuhinga, “Mō tātou, ā, mō kā uri, ā, muri ake nei”.
The Otago Peninsula: A Unique Identity
ABSTRACT: The Otago Peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand has a long indigenous Māori history that is rooted in the land and the people of the area. The stories and genealogy that connect Māori New Zealanders to the Otago Peninsula are well documented and retold. After European contact with and connection to the Peninsula was initiated the colonisation of the area occurred rapidly. The Otago Peninsula historically, and to the present day, has always had a separate chartacter to that of the adjascent mainland (around the city of Dunedin). Despite the short distance between them, the culture of the Otago Peninsula remains distinct to that of the mainland as if it were an island.
