MAI Journal 2017: Volume 6 Issue 2

Many Māori researchers have mahi-toi skills. Mahi-toi, arts and the production of art, is where a concept takes physical form, and is brought into the physical realm by mahi-ā-ringa. The mahi-toi practitioner is the conduit. When the practitioner is also the researcher and vice versa, these vernaculars can enrich each other, and structure the work. Setting research writing practice beside mahi-toi practice also lends theoretical and analytical frameworks that could be useful for mahi-toi practitioners making the transition to academic research.

This paper is about the adoption of a novel way of using documentary analysis in order to be culturally responsive in a research setting. It describes an original method, located in an actual empirical study in a wānanga, that meshed the analysis of documents with a group hui through a bricolage approach. To support a Māori kaupapa, the researcher wished to incorporate values of participation and collaboration, thus overturning the traditional values of simplicity, passivity and individuality that are the purported advantages of documentary analysis.

A growing body of research within the realm of Māori entrepreneurship is being produced by researchers offering powerful alternatives to Western hegemonic academic discourses. Ethnic minority research has also sought to challenge the West’s construction of entrepreneurship and its lack of plurivocality, yet few entrepreneurship models have embraced intersecting theory. We think that this oversight presents a useful opportunity for enhancing the study of Māori entrepreneurship in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Whiria ngā tangata: Weave the people together

This paper considers the use of contemporary popular waiata in promulgating a Māori worldview by expressing cultural identity and belonging. Waiata are a traditional medium, a practice through which Māori knowledge, histories, culture and language continue to be passed down from one generation to another (Ka‘ai-Mahuta, 2010; McLean, 1996; Orbell, 1991; Smith, 2003). Similarities can be observed between traditional and contemporary waiata, in that messages are delivered through musical, melodic, rhythmic and harmonic motifs that are distinctively Māori.

Pōwhiri has a long history and generates deeper meanings beyond the formal enactment of welcome. What happens when this ritual is transferred into contemporary environments, especially those beyond the traditional marae? In particular, how might the performance of this ritual as adapted to suit objectives beyond its ritual origins be seen, even so, to reconstruct and reinforce the sense of identity, communality and belonging—who we are and how we come together—that pōwhiri was evolved to engender?