'Closing the Gaps': From postcolonialism to Kaupapa Māori and beyond.

The article discusses New Zealand history, particularly examining Māori theories and interpretations of history. It considers postcolonial theory and Kaupapa Māori theory. The author comments on the government policy of "closing the gaps," referring to efforts to improve the conditions of underachieving New Zealand groups. He also reflects on Mātauranga, a Māori concept concerning knowledge. The history and oral tradition of the people of the Māori iwi, or social unit, of Ngati Porou is also discussed

Revitalizing Te Ika-a-Maui: Māori migration and the nation

Maui-Tikitiki-A-Taranga is more than simply a ‘mythic’ hero. For many he is a prominent figure in a long family line. The whakapapa that binds Māori to our tupuna is significant to the present and future, and carries with it the ‘ultimate expression’ of who we are. Maui has been described as ‘the most important culture hero in Māori mythology’, whose exploits and archetype provide precedents that Māori respond to in the present. The status of Maui within my own tribal boundaries is clear: ‘In accordance with the traditions and tikanga of Ngati Porou, we as People of this Land have been here since the beginning of time, or more aptly in the context of Aotearoa, since Maui fished up Te Ika-a-Maui (North Island). Maui-Tikitiki-a-Taranga is attributed with fishing up the North Island, raising it out of the depths of the sea, for successive generations of Māori to populate and cultivate.’ Maui’s waka, as Ngāti Porou uphold, is Nukutaimemeha, believed to be ‘cradled’ upon our ancestral mountain Hikurangi. However, there are other stories that recognize the waka as the South Island, with Stewart Island its anchor. These variations aside, the history remains a well-rehearsed one throughout the Māori world and in other parts of Polynesia

'Kōrero Tuku Iho': Reconfiguring Oral History and Oral Tradition

The studies of oral history and oral tradition each have their own distinctive bodies of literature and preferred methodologies, yet share significant overlaps that make them difficult to differentiate. For many indigenous peoples, oral histories and traditions are key to their their past, present, and future lives, and are rarely considered separate. This thesis examines the differences and similarities between the studies of oral history and oral tradition. It explores how these areas of research converge and diverge in form, politics, practice, and theory, and the extent to which they resonate within a specific ‘indigenous’ context and community. The thesis draws on the life narrative interviews of four generations of Ngāti Porou descendents, the second largest tribal group in New Zealand, whose home boundaries extend from Potikirua in the north to Te Toka-a-Taiau in the south on the East Coast of the North Island. Drawing on these voices, this study offers a commentary on the form and nature of oral traditions and histories from an indigenous perspective, and explores the ways they converge and depart from ‘international’ understandings. An exploration of these intersections offers insights to the ways oral history and oral traditions might be reconsidered as distinctive fields of study. Reconfigured through an indigenous frame of reference, this thesis challenges scholars of both oral history and oral tradition to expand their conceptions. Likewise, it urges indigenous scholars to consider more deeply the work of oral historians and oral traditionalists to further enhance their scholarship. Moreover, this thesis revisits the intellectual and conceptual territory that names and claims oral history and oral tradition, and invites all those who work in these areas to develop a more extensive comprehension of the interconnections that exist between each area of study

A brief history of Whakapapa: Māori approaches to genealogy

Whakapapa is the Māori term for genealogy. It has been described by some as the skeletal structure of Maori epistemology because all things have their own genealogies. In research, whakapapa has been presented in tribal histories, Maori Land Court records, and consistently as a framework for matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and Māori research methodologies. This essay offers a brief overview of the ways in which whakapapa has been understood and negotiated in research particularly after the arrival of Europeans. Some early ethnographers, for instance, applied their own genealogical methods of dating to whakapapa, which influenced various Māori approaches from the twentieth century. With the advent of literacy and print, Māori experimented with new ways to record genealogy, and yet the underlying oral, ethical, and cultural practices that are crucial to whakapapa have remained integral to how it still lives and operates in Maori communities today

Survivance as narrative identity: Voices from a Ngāti Tiipa oral history project

For Indigenous peoples, and Mäori specifically, storytelling and oral history are crucial to the survival of our collective identities, culture and language. Retold across generations, our stories are often explicit and interwoven narratives of personal and collective memories. Drawing on Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor’s (2009) concept of “survivance stories”, this article explores a set of three oral history narratives of kaumätua from Ngäti Tiipa, one of the 33 iwi and hapü of the Waikato-Tainui confederation. Our analysis reveals how enduring connections to the river and land, the retention of whänau practices and the intergenerational transmission of tüpuna names have shaped contemporary expressions of Ngäti Tiipa identity and belonging. We explore how these testimonies reveal survivance as a repeated theme that has its own nuanced interpretation in individual and collective tribal oral stories

The presence of the past: Maori history in contemporary reflection

This is the opening line of a famous saying in my tribe. For our people - Ngāti Porou - these words have become embedded in our tribal identity as important directives that we are encouraged to aspire to. In the “days destined to you”, Ngata reminds us that each generation has its own mana (or authority), our own responsibilities and challenges, our own dreams and destinies to fulfil, and our own histories to tell about Ngāti Porou: who we are, our past, present, and future. If we consider this expectant, and I think hopeful, affirmation as a gift and responsibility, then taking real ownership of the “days destined to us” requires us to know what our forebears have entrusted us with. What are those historical gifts that we might use to “centre” and assert ourselves as Māori, as Ngāti Porou? We might look at this directly, i mua: the past before us because it is our history that is so crucial to us as we walk consciously, and with determination, into the future. Our past before us helps us to know where we are going, it helps us correc our course when we stray, keeps us mindful of the “kaupapa”: whatever that might be in our generation and corner of the Maori universe. We’ve heard already today from both Enoka and Arini how Māori, in our own ways, are engaging with our past, drawing on our korero tuku iho (our oral histories passed down across the generations), on our whakairo (our carving), to illuminate the many ways Māori do, and think about, the past

New Zealand history is Maori history: Tikanga as the ethical foundation of historical scholarship In Aotearoa New Zealand

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE TO FIND that New Zealand history is Māori history. In 1987 when Tipene O’Regan stated that the ‘the past belongs to all New Zealanders, but first it is ours’, he was drawing attention to New Zealand history’s foundation in Māori history.1 Thinking about New Zealand history as Māori history does not mean denying the histories of European, Asian and Pasifika immigrants, but draws attention to the notion that ‘settler’ aspirations to claim ‘Aotearoa’ as home occur within a much broader narrative of indigenous occupation and struggle.2 Indeed, how can New Zealand history be the story of ‘here’ when it has ‘othered’ indigenous narratives that speak to the heart of what it is to belong in the land of the long white cloud? Yes, New Zealand history is Māori history – and that presents a problem for tangata whenua self-determination. Likewise, for Pākehā, it is an issue because until New Zealand history recognizes and enables the centrality of Māori history it will always fail to articulate the collective ‘us’ that is so often assumed in the discourse of ‘full and final settlement’.3 In its current form it will never be able to ethically or adequately account for the shaping of a New Zealand identity that finds ‘composure’ in the story of how Pākehā became ‘native’ New Zealanders.4 For Māori, these issues are keenly felt, because while New Zealand history has always been about us, it has predominantly been articulated on the colonizers’ terms. In the ‘discursive constructions’ that are New Zealand histories, the indigenous have regularly been culturally appropriated, dislocated and misrepresented.5 Even when Māori have turned their back on the writing of New Zealand history it has been, and will still be, a history of being or becoming ‘native’. Yes, New Zealand history is Māori history – so why does it feel like the story of Pākehā settlers

Telling “Us” in the “Days Destined to You: Response Life-Telling: Indigenous Oral Autobiography and the Performance of Relation

This “tau-utuutu” (responsive) protocol feels familiar to me.² My turn to speak, to respond, to share in a conversation with Warren Cariou’s stimulating essay on “Life-Telling,” Indigenous autobiography, and Dovie Thomason. It reminds me of how life-telling, orality, and history, interweave and work in my tribal universe. At home, we take turns speaking. We inherit our words, we respond, carve, and weave new narratives—make them ours. Where I come from, lives are frequently “told,” sung, cried, carved, and performed, through tribal conversations, a chorus of textured tones, sometimes in a grand debate within which our personal and collective pasts, presents, and futures converge and diverge.³ I am glad, then, to be invited, to add my voice to this present discussion. It feels natural . . . normal . . . Native

An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand

At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular