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Sites of understanding and transformation:
M āori and cross-cultural research
Tracey McIntosh (Tūhoe), Director, Ng ā Pae o te Mā ramatanga,
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Auckland, New Zealand
New Zealand, as a settler state, has a colonial past
that it must navigate, negotiate and confront. By its
very nature, the settler state is a contested space.
Settler histories often write over the histories of indigenous
peoples, at once invalidating and rendering invisible their
own cultural, political, economic and social landscapes.
As tangata whenua (people of the land, indigenous people),
Māori find their social position in New Zealand society to
be a disputed one. One of the characteristics of coloniza-
tion is the use of violence. In some cases this violence has
been extreme and genocidal in intent, in others violence
has been used to ‘pacify’ or to allow the extraction of
resources or labour from an indigenous population. The
ramifications of colonization are long-term and ongoing
and in New Zealand, among other things, have contributed
to Māori being over-represented in nearly every negative
social indicator including poorer health, education and
justice outcomes. Given histories of conflict and oppression
the obstacles to rapprochement and meaningful dialogue
leading to social justice outcomes are considerable.
Yet, there is a need to recognize that in New Zealand in the
last 40 years significant gains have been made to acknowl-
edge past grievances and to build a relationship between the
state, its agencies and Mā ori communities. It is important to
note the significant roles that Māori protest movements and
the subsequent Mā ori Renaissance (where things Mā ori are
seen to be politically, culturally and artistically ascendant)
have played in creating broad social and political awareness
which in turn created the conditions conducive to better
cross-cultural dialogue. Māori activists, tribal and commu-
nity leaders and Māori intellectuals have played seminal
roles in bringing Mā ori experience and knowledge into the
mainstream and fostering both consciousness and dialogue
between non-Māori New Zealanders and Mā ori. Protests are
sites of conflict but they also always hold the potential for
transformative social change and often lay the foundation to
build a framework for greater social cohesion.
Māori researchers have also made a meaningful contribution
in presenting alternative analyses of colonial and contemporary
history and offering different narratives of experience and inter-
pretation. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, an internationally renowned
Mā ori academic, speaks of ‘researching back’. This demands
that we interrogate the representation and ideological construc-
tions of indigenous peoples found in the mainstream dominant
culture and look at the way that it has shaped, informed and
legitimated policies that have intentionally alienated indig-
enous peoples from their land, resources and culture.
In the last four decades the Mā ori protest movement has
contributed to encouraging many Māori to enter into tertiary
education in numbers not seen previously, and to the recla-
mation of the research environment. It has meant that Māori
have actively resisted being solely the ‘subject’ of research
for non-Mā ori researchers but that they have also challenged
the entire research process and generated new emancipa-
tory methodologies. These challenges and innovations have
changed the way that research is done in New Zealand. They
have also influenced the way that research is conducted in
many other countries, leading to knowledge-generation and
sharing as well as supporting greater mutual understandings.
This challenging of dominant research paradigms not only
elicits new indigenous research paradigms but also critically
reworks existing models and enhances mainstream research
practices. Although these changes come with difficulties and
contestation, there now exists a far greater awareness which
allows issues to be discussed and interrogated, and research
outcomes are all the richer for it.
However, the term ‘research’ itself remains problematic for
many Mā ori and other indigenous communities. For indig-
enous peoples research has largely been used to classify and
subjugate them as well as to invalidate them as holders of
knowledge and practice. Mistrust, betrayal and deception have
all been features of the New Zealand research landscape. It has
been littered by experiences that have distorted and misrepre-
sented M āori experience. Trust and power relations must be
examined from the outset of any research endeavour. It has long
been observed that the process of conducting research rein-
forces rather than weakens unequal power relations. It remains
critical to consider the historical foreground and background of
political and power relations that may be silenced, minimized
or decontextualized within the context of the research problem.
Too often research has been carried out as if the pursuit of
knowledge was acultural and could be undertaken with little
regard to history, or to issues of class, ethnicity or culture.
These issues are central to cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural research dynamics – like all research dynam-
ics – are dominated by questions of power and questions of
powerlessness. Power relations and power differentials are
articulated from the point of setting research agendas right
through to research design, research implementation and
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