This research investigated how mātauranga Māori through a pūrākau could be used to increase a tauiwi teacher’s confidence and practice within a tuakana–teina learning relationship. Mātauranga Māori relates to the interwoven connections between humans and the world that inform tikanga. Relationship with the local hapū and their tikanga of partnership and whakamana provided a framework of whanaungatanga, through which ako occurred between the hapū and the tuakana–teina.

Whakataukī are metaphors that provide us with ethical guidelines, and tikanga and kawa are the wisdom, knowledge and history handed down from the past to future generations to help people navigate their lives and support aspirations for today and the future. Using a twin-hulled waka ama as a metaphor for the relationship between participants and researchers in Indigenous research, this article explores Māori and Indigenous ethics as having equal status to Western research ethics. In relation to research, ethics can be a complicated domain when working alongside Māori and Indigenous peoples.

Māori economies have unique foundations, which differ fundamentally from Eurocentric economies, making it difficult to identify appropriate epistemological and methodological approaches to understanding them. Critical Māori economies scholars emphasise the importance of whakapapa-based approaches to understanding Māori economies. In this article, whakapapa is conceptualised as a way of both knowing (epistemology) and coming to know (methodology) Māori economies. It introduces a whakapapa-based episto-methodological framework based on four key tenets—dimensionality, relationality, obligations, and multi-temporality—to understand Māori economies from a te ao Māori perspective.

A book review by Te Kupua O’Connor of Mātauranga Māori, written by Hirini Moko Mead (2025).