traditional knowledge conference 2008 te tatau pounamu

Challenging the Objective ApproachSome academics would disagree with my approach, which requires an up-front identification of theresearcher’s whakapapa and background, arguing that what matters most are the ideas themselves andobjective analysis. Of course, a person’s ideas and analysis are important but to argue that they shouldstand alone and are somehow value neutral is wrong. The example of Elizabeth Rata, an academicbased at the University of Auckland, illustrates this point. In September 2004, Rata presented a papercriticizing a kaupapa Māori (Māori philosophy) approach to education. At the time Māori academics,including the Director of the International Research Institute for Māori and Indigenous Education, DrLeonie Pihama, responded to Rata’s arguments, highlighting Rata’s failure to identify herself andarticulate how her identity and experience helped to shape her arguments. One of the main problemsidentified during this debate was Rata’s refusal to say whether she was Māori or not. She instead argued,I don’t talk about myself because I want to be able to separate who I am and my ideas. I reallylike the idea that the arguments themselves should stand or fall on their own merits. It makes iteasier for people to attack them … I also regard things like religion, ethnicity and lifestyle as notin the public domain. (2006)This approach fails to recognize that our ideas are not separate from who we are. Our ideas growand develop out of our experiences; and those experiences are shaped by our religion, ethnicity andlifestyle, whether we choose to acknowledge this or not. If we care about the merit of our ideas thenpresumably we also care about how they are received and the impact they might have on the lives of thepeople we are writing for and about. That means we need to be transparent about who we are and howour identity has influenced our ideas. This is particularly true when that transparency matters to ouraudience; when we are writing about Māori things and our audience is Māori then transparency aboutidentity always matters. This is because we tend to make sense of each other and our ideas by placingthem in context and in relationship to other people and the environment. This explains why the mostcommon question Māori people ask when we meet one another is not “What do you do for a living?”but “Where do you come from?” The answer immediately identifies us in terms of our membership ofparticular iwi, hapū and whānau and therefore our rights and responsibilities in relation to our whenua(land) and the collective.We take seriously (or not) a person’s ideas on the basis of whether that person has any credibilityand integrity within our own communities. It is not the role of Pākehā academics, like Rata, to questionwhether this approach is valid, “objective” or valuable; nor is it acceptable for Pākehā academics todefend their right to subject our processes to critical analysis when that analysis is based primarily ontheory rather than interaction with indigenous communities and genuine knowledge sharing.Throughout this research project I tried to maintain standards that I believe are consistent with akaupapa Māori approach to research. The essence of a kaupapa Māori approach to research as Iunderstand it begins with understanding the needs, values and expectations of the Māori communitieswe engage with when carrying out research. These communities will almost always involve widerwhānau, hapū and iwi groups as well as the individuals researchers work with. Working within thesecommunities requires an appreciation of how people relate to one another in the context of theirwhakapapa relationships to each other, to the land and to the environment (Smith, 1999). ProfessorTania Ka’ai, a Māori scholar, defines a kaupapa Māori approach as one which is best understood as aculturally specific framework which is located in te ao Māori (the Māori world), reflecting therelationship Māori have to the land and environment, to Māori socialisation patterns and culturalnuances and to Māori identity. As such it is difficult for non-Māori to fully comprehend the concept ofkaupapa Māori because they sit outside the Māori culture (Ka’ai, 2005).The Role of Indigenous ResearchersThe main role of indigenous academics in this debate is to continue to maintain and develop our ownways of teaching and researching despite the resistance we encounter towards our work. Manyindigenous scholars who choose to work within traditional academic institutions, such as universities,are committed to working in a way that reflects our culture and identity. Professor Tania Ka’ai explainsthis approach in the following way:214