How researchers work and learn alongside Indigenous worlds

Te Tari o te Ihonuku Māori, University of Auckland and Community Research is set to host the ‘Research is Ceremony’ panel (25 November) which will feature local and global researchers sharing their reflections and insights into the way they conduct research within Indigenous worlds and the sacred process of research.

Indigenous researchers are knowledge seekers who work to progress Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing in a modern and constantly evolving context, says Opaskwayak Cree scholar, Dr Shawn Wilson.

Wilson has spent much of his life straddling the Indigenous and mainstream world and will be a notable speaker at the event. He is an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan in Canada.

“Most of my life these days is spent teaching other Indigenous knowledge seekers (and my kids) how to accomplish this balancing act while still keeping both feet on the ground,” he says.

Wilson, the author of Research is Ceremony, will share his reflections on his research practice with First Nations people from Australia and Canada.

“If your research hasn't changed you as a person, you haven't done it right.”

The panel will also include Dr Albert Refiti (AUT), a research leader in the field of Pacific architecture, who will share talanoa about Pacific concepts of space, and how Pacific people can create new models of working and notions of place and citizenship in the diaspora towards a Pacific cosmopolitic.

Māori Studies doctoral student Te Kapua O'Connor will talk about his co-authored book, A Fire in the Belly of Hineāmaru, and Edmond Fehoko will talk about changing the narrative around the health and well-being of Pacific communities.

Atlantic Fellow Kaye-Maree Dunn, the panel facilitator, will also share reflections on her Indigenous banking and Māori tech mapping research.

The panel follows the Mātauranga Māori Symposium ( 24 November) which will explore Te Ao Toi concepts as part of our annual series of Mātauranga Māori or Indigenous knowledge.

Register for the Research is Ceremony event.

To register your attendance to our virtual webinar or our in-person kaupapa, please email kaitautoko@mea.nz.