Whatuora. Theorising a Kaupapa Māori arts-based methodology

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. Contributing to a whakapapa of Māori and Indigenous decolonising methodologies, I introduce here Whatuora—a kaupapa Māori arts-based methodology that emerged from research about living as Māori women and the stories the women spoke and wove into the Māori cloaks they created.