This article explores whatu as a Māori arts pedagogy, focusing on how it extends beyond traditional practice into a space of oranga for practitioners and learners alike. Drawing from qualitative interviews with three experienced wāhine kaiwhatu, the study examines their early learning experiences, teaching methods and reflections on how their pedagogy has evolved over time. The findings reveal that whatu pedagogy is deeply embedded in intergenerational transmission, cultural identity and creative practices that contribute to Māori community wellbeing.

Māori and Indigenous people are methodological, yet how we theorise our ways of being, our languages and our cultural beliefs is often held to the academic margins. Sophisticated systems of Māori knowledge production, retention and transmission over many hundreds of years, twined together with hard-won kaupapa Māori territory, positions us well to re-centre our theorised ways of being, doing and speaking, as a robust research methodology most capable of telling our stories through our own Māori lens.

Drawing on nautical notions of traversing the Pacific Ocean, we seek to encourage Māori and Pasifika researchers to come together in purposeful and transforming ways, not to further homogenise Oceanic identities but, as many sang in active resistance in Aotearoa New Zealand during the 1990s, Kia Kotahi ra Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (“Unite as one like the Pacific Ocean”). We present Vā-kā as a methodology that emerged from a research fellowship focused on Māori and Pasifika student success at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Conceptually, we lash together the Pasifika term vā—relational time and space—with the Māori term kā—to ignite, to consider, to be in action.

This article introduces He Vaka Moana, which has been tested and evaluated at international and local levels. He Vaka Moana is a strength-based model of academic fellowship that is framed by Oceanic principles and methodologies. The authors base this model on what connects and sustains us as Māori and Pasifika people—that is, Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.