Indigenous

Maori children are uplifted by the New Zealand government at disproportionate rates compared with tauiwi children. The removal of tamariki from culturally embedded networks exacerbates intergenerational trauma created by colonisation. Placements into unsafe contexts mean that additional instances of harm and cumulative trauma are common, and tamaiti atawhai are not positioned within fullness of their cultural being. This article draws on a broader Kaupapa Māori project involving semistructured interviews with kaiāwhina Māori across the North Island.

This paper explores how we, three wāhine Māori, are moving through citational practice—who, how, and why we cite. Stemming from a refusal to recirculate settler colonial ideologies in doctoral research, we consider what it means to cite as Māori. In centring whakapapa, we conceptualise citations as extensions of our relational world and as a way we can acknowledge and nurture the intergenerational relationships that constitute who we are, and how we come to know. Citation is an expression of whanaungatanga.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns in Aotearoa New Zealand have been a source of change, of uncertainty and of anxiety. The ways in which we engage with each other as Indigenous people have had to change drastically and suddenly; our ways of being, of sharing space, of being present, have all had to be adjusted. For Indigenous postgraduate students, COVID-19 and lockdowns have meant a re-shaping and re-thinking of how we come together as a community that supports each other within Westernised institutions and along our academic and research journeys.

He Vaka Moana is a strengths-based project framed by oceanic principles and methodologies that connect us as Māori and Pasifika to the ocean. The underpinning kaupapa and theoretical framework of He Vaka Moana is the Tongan proverb “pikipiki hama kae vaevae manava”, which refers to our individual vaka coming together to support each other as we navigate the moana.