Noho Taiao: reclaiming Māori science with young people

Abstract

Connections and belonging to ancestral lands are strongly and consistently argued as fundamental to Māori education, health and wellbeing. When our connections with and access to health-promoting places of belonging are damaged, we lose more than component parts of wellbeing. An entire cultural infrastructure integral to identity, community, spirituality, sustainability and even material sustenance is eroded, compromising health, wellbeing and vitality. Young people in rural areas are often seen as missing out on the amenities and attractions available in cities, but are assumed to have compensatory access to and positive relationships with ‘nature’. For multiple reasons, many arising from colonial legacies, this is often not so for young Māori and there are initiatives underway that seek to reconnect them with customary environments. Place-based learning approaches that use local environments and ecosystems as living laboratories, reimagining the way students engage with knowledge, science and understandings of the natural world can be valuable in this respect.

Te Rārawa Noho Taiao projects in the Far North of Aotearoa have been operating for nearly a decade, using indigenous pedagogy that promotes Māori science, science leadership, and learning, applying them in ways that produce a range of health and wellbeing benefits. These include enhanced educational engagement, strengthened capabilities, increased participation/belonging, stronger connections, constructive peer processes and positive intergenerational interactions, all based in Māori values and praxis. Such elements are widely recognised in health-promoting frameworks as highly implicated in the creation and maintenance of health and wellbeing for individuals, communities and populations. In this paper, we use interviews with organisers and teachers of these Noho Taiao and a survey of student participants, to explore the educational and health promotion effects.

Keywords

Māori Aotearoa New Zealand education health promotion health/wellbeing Noho Taiao

Introduction

For indigenous peoples living in colonial societies, imposed education and health practices have impacted heavily, contributing to intergenerational disparities between settler and indigenous outcomes. In education, routinely health-demoting institutional environments that abuse, alienate and marginalise indigenous students, have undermined learning, wellbeing and thriving (1 –4). In the colonial project in Aotearoa New Zealand, European models of education have been among the key mechanisms by which settler culture has undermined indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, enforcing alien values, beliefs and practices. As Penetito (5) observed:

The education system has played a crucial role in acculturating Māori children and their families into accepting these [Western] ideals as being right and proper for them (p.90).

Health

Māori conceptualisations of hauora (health) and vitality take broad holistic and relational forms (6 –8) that contrast sharply with the fragmented, unsustainable and often exploitative approaches to health and illness imposed by colonial settler culture (9,10). In one emerging conceptual framework, Tangata Whenua, Tangata Ora, hauora is seen as a dynamic and unified system that critically expresses a relational Māori metaphysics around the inseparability of humans and environments. Tangata Whenua, Tangata Ora emphasises an integration of people and place – they are not divided and operate as an ecosystem with visible and invisible, tangible and intangible dimensions – with profound implications for health, wellbeing and sustainability.

In terms of health promotion, the implications of such thinking are clearly decolonising (11), re-integrating and transformational, requiring a radical reversal of the ontological and epistemic effects of colonisation in pursuit of the re-emergence of mātauranga (Māori knowledge) and praxis that can address the aspirations of tangata whenua (indigenous people). When we damage our connections with and access to health-promoting environments and places of identity and belonging, we lose more than component parts of wellbeing. As well as disruptions to food safety and security and reduced opportunities for recreational and other physical activities, we lose knowledge and a sense of belonging. In Aotearoa, Te Pae Mahutonga (TPM), a Māori health-promotion framework (12) emphasises the interplay of health prerequisites Ngā Manukura (community leadership) and Te Mana Whakahaere (autonomy) with four health-promotion tasks. These are Mauriora (faciliating access to te ao Māori and the Māori world, and strengthening cultural identity), Waiora (ensuring environmental protection), Toiora (promotion of healthy lifestyles), and Te Oranga (enhancing participation in society).

Increasingly, research is exploring links between nature and health/wellbeing. An overview (13) of links between greenspace and health found little evidence that harm was reduced through decreased exposure to pollutants whereas some studies demonstrated restorative effects including stress reduction and there was mixed evidence on building capabilities, such as encouraging physical activity. There is emerging scholarship such as ecological systems theory and the concept of the ecological wellbeing of childhood (14) that seek to conceptually integrate health with environments

Acknowledging the complexity and tentative nature of such findings, Astell-Burt (15) argues ‘not all green spaces are the same’. For the Māori, we might argue that not all relationships with greenspaces are the same, by which we mean that lands, waters, and forests often sit within a framework of intergenerational trauma, grief and the desecration of the spirit and life force of lands (16). Within indigenous contexts, initiatives to enhance health and wellbeing are about connecting with whenua (land) in culturally-inflected, tangible and intangible ways with environments alienated and harmed by colonisation.

While the health significance of nature in the form of urban greenspace or parks may be accepted in the case of city youth, young people in rural settings are often assumed to have access to and a positive relationship with ‘nature’ in ways that urban children do not. In rural settings, young people are often seen as missing out on the amenities of larger population centres, and health promotion initiatives often focus on developing recreational facilities. However, for rural Māori, the fact that so much of the land is now privately owned means that access is rarely assured, and the once critical resources of survival, health and thriving are effectively locked away. Health and education overlap in nature-based education, with impacts on physical activity, mental wellbeing, social wellbeing and other aspects of holistic health.

Education

In education, the colonial character and harmful outcomes of the system are reflected in large disparities in formal qualifications, with major negative consequences for employment and income (17). This has led to the emergence of distinctive indigenous movements, educational institutions and practices designed to express self-determination, indigenise curricula and restore relational identity practices (18,19). Kaupapa Māori education now spans the spectrum from preschool to tertiary study, grounded in Māori ontology, epistemology, pedagogies and curricula, with te reo Māori (the Māori language) the language of instruction and tikanga Māori (customary practices) essential elements. It is increasingly drawing on the burgeoning Māori scholarship of education but also wide-ranging works of Māori philosophy, science, arts, humanities and technology (18).

Within this environment, data show that, at senior secondary school, non-Māori participate and excel in science subjects at approximately twice the rate of Māori (20). In an effort to address science disparities, the Kura Pūtaiao movement (21 –23) embraced place-based Māori science education (24,25) strongly focused on environmental/ecological studies, as a vehicle for improving engagement and outcomes. According to Stewart (22, p. 852), Pūtaiao (science) is a ‘super-set of science’, encompassing all of the Western episteme, but incorporating and interweaving Māori knowledge and values.

In their literature review of Pūtaiao, Smallbone et al. (26) describe a framework that has developed from a kaupapa Māori critique of the inadequacies of science teaching for Māori students. Like its conventional counterpart, the Pūtaiao curriculum was cast in terms of understanding the natural, physical and material world but also included a strand focussing on the history and philosophy of science. This latter provision with its ability to challenge scientific hegemony, particularly in the context of the repression of Māori knowledge via colonialism (11), was met with considerable resistance at theoretical, policy and funding levels. Pūtaiao evaluation by Stewart (23) argued that the continued inequity of science education outcomes for Māori is a reflection of this ongoing political and bureaucratic resistance.

As often happens when Māori encounter impediments of this kind, innovative and committed professionals, whānau (family) and hapū (subtribe) seek out alternatives that they then apply and refine outside established institutional structures. In part responding to the failure of schools to adequately deliver in relation to Māori science achievement, many Māori communities have combined their educational aspirations for their children with programmes designed to share their enthusiasm for and knowledge of nature in order to inspire and model engagement in science.

We argue that Pūtaiao initiatives are profoundly relevant to hauora and health promotion and trace the establishment and evolution of one such development by the Te Rārawa iwi (tribe) in the far northern district of Te Ika a Maui – Te Hiku o te Ika. We used kaupapa Māori (11) social science methods to explore the nature, intention and impacts of Te Rārawa Noho Taiao.

Environments

In 2009, iwi members concerned about secondary school science outcomes set about developing and tailoring a Pūtaiao approach using local environments as ‘living laboratories’, places of learning, encouraging engagement with taiao (environment), mātauranga Māori and science concepts in diverse non-classroom settings. Te Rārawa Noho Taiao bought together tauira (students) who were interested in advancing their environmental science education in the ancestral spaces of their marae (meeting places) to stimulate thinking about science careers, contributions to kaitiaki (environmental caregiving) activities, strengthening whakapapa (genealogy) connections, and roles and responsibilities as iwi members.

Taking local ecosystems of lands, waters, plants and animals as key resources for engagement of young learners, the project has marae-based workshops, built around Māori praxis. In small groups, the students complete modules led by topic specialists (most of them Māori and many Te Rārawa) for immersion experiences that locate science content in the local environment. Four-day summer Noho rotate through Te Rārawa marae with secondary school (years 9–13) tauira attending in groups of 35–50, for programmes fashioned around environmental issues and iwi history in each location. Two-day winter Noho extend to members of the five Te Hiku iwi, involving approximately 60 secondary students, with the focus on hands-on activities such as species identification, water quality monitoring, revegetation planting, pest control and rongoā (healing) practices.

Daytime sessions are supplemented with a broad range of evening activities involving inspirational presentations and fun activities – waiata and haka (performance), local history, taonga tākaro kemu Māori (games), ranga pao (slam poetry), and debates about environmental issues. Young iwi members now pursuing careers in the sciences play an important role in the programme, sharing their study journeys, dreams and challenges while role-modelling benefits of higher education.

Method

Kaupapa Māori research (11,27) assumes approa-ches that position lived indigenous experience as more than ‘anecdotal’ accounts that can be dismissed as biased renditions of events. Records of Noho Taiao events and informal evaluations (Henwood, personal communication, June 2018) carried out since 2010 giving details of date, location and attendance (~400 tauira), were reviewed. In 2016, we conducted a more formal evaluation using a survey plus open-ended questions. In 2017–2018 we asked key contributors to write about or give interviews about their experiences, observations and aspirations of the Noho, gathering seven such records, and conducted a tauira focus group.

There is merit in making use of carefully considered, evaluative observational data provided by leaders, teachers and tauira collected purposively. We used a broad thematic approach to the content and discursive features of these data in order to identify the key messages that our informants offered. We followed Braun and Clarke (28) in building inductively from this corpus to articulate the commonalities and variations among the informant accounts.

The survey used a 5-point Likert scale from ‘not at all’ to ‘very good’ to gather data from 46 students about clarity of aims and ease of application of learnings, in relation to specific activities. These included riparian planting at the Waihou Channel, water quality testing at Te Maroa, observational kayaking the Waihou Channel, native plant nursery workshop, tuna (eel) and freshwater species studies and rongoā Māori workshops.

We present analyses of these quantitative and qualitative data to create a narrative of the Te Rārawa Noho Taiao initiative and consider their health-promoting dimensions. The quantitative data are presented followed by analysis of the qualitative data.

Findings

Quantitative

The survey findings from the 2016 winter Noho show high degrees of engagement and positivity towards the activities. A summary is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Percent of 4 and 5 ratings on clarity of aims and ease of application of what they learned.

Activity	No. responses	Aims	Application
Riparian planting	45	80.0	73.3
Kayak observation	42	71.2	76.2
Nursery	40	77.5	79.5
Water quality	42	85.8	85.8
Tuna/species	46	95.3	91.3
Rongoā	46	85.3	91.6

The data show combined ‘4’ and ‘5’ Likert-scale ratings of between 71% and 95% from participants, suggesting that the large majority of tauira were engaged and saw the activities as clear and easy to apply. These findings contrast sharply with the combined ‘1’ and ‘2’ Likert ratings, which ranged between 0% and 12%, indicating that only small numbers of participants were struggling with engaging in the Noho. In a final survey item ‘Rate the Noho’, 74.4% chose ‘excellent’ and 25.6% selected ‘very good’.

The high levels of endorsement suggest that participants understand the activities in terms of purpose and relevance. In parallel, we noted that tauira participation and engagement are contributing to the TPM health promotion tasks including Waiora, Mauriora, Toiora and potentially Te Oranga, while also reflecting the impact of the prerequisites Ngā Manukura and Te Mana Whakahaere.

Survey data were supplemented by open-ended questions about presentations. Responses were varied and insightful, reinforcing the impression given by the survey, but adding personal understandings of the diverse activities. From these and other less formal evaluative comments from tauira gathered over multiple Noho, one of the strongly recurring comments in recent years has been the inspiration taken from tuakana (graduates) returning to contribute to the programme.

Qualitative

What follows is analysis of selected data excerpts gathered under four themes.

Networks

The organising team was pivotal in developing a programme that had relevance and that students identified with, and then in engaging contributors familiar with the cultural framework of Te Rārawa. Participant 3, one of the regular presenters, saw the Noho Taiao as clearly linked to broad aspirations using education as a vehicle.

They want them [tauira] to think bigger, dream bigger, know that there is a bigger world out there and that they can achieve it if they want to do that. So other community projects aren’t really like that. They’re not really thinking of that big picture. These guys have a whole different kaupapa, through education you can do anything you want to do.

Staunch advocacy for education and encouragement of self-belief is health promoting, since time in supportive settings is highly protective for young people.

The kaiako (the teachers) all live and work in the rohe (district), have vast iwi and community experience and networks, and share a passion for the health and wellbeing of their people. This results in high levels of in-kind support for the project across diverse sectors. Participant 6 acknowledges:

Our team also have a wide range of networks and contacts to be able to provide a great range of interesting engaging activities/information for participants … Strong community networks, links, connections from grassroots through to senior management roles.

Having inspirational people who are willing to step out of their professions to work with the rangatahi (young people) and provide strong, transdisciplinary offerings was a key feature of success. This also models the TPM task of Mauriora to participants through their engagement and mentorship.

Leadership and agency

These ideas are central to the data gathered and are acknowledged elements of health promotion, reflecting the Māori philosophies of education, health and the environments that the leaders of the initiative bring to the project. They embody the TPM prerequisites ngā Manukura and Te Mana Whakahaere – leadership and autonomy – encompassing critical ideas about iwi collectivity/connectivity, identity and the right/ability to act for Māori interests and aspirations. Participant 7 makes this very clear:

As leaders and decision-makers of the day we promote a mindset of kaitiakitanga, of stewardship and of wellbeing, ensuring through our deliberate acts of having Noho Taiao, this particular mindset will grow the culture, will grow and expand throughout the generations now and to come, ngā uri whakatupu, and our Māori people will return to their rightful place as tangata of the whenua.

The vision is about enhancing and expanding iwi engagement and agency enacted through kaitiakitanga, contributing to the TPM task of Waiora that, nurtured through this and other initiatives, has the power and efficacy to restore relationships between tangata and whenua. Participant 7 implies a process that will ‘grow’ this way of being that has been damaged by historical and contemporary processes of colonisation, though it may take generations.

Participant 1 points out the Noho also have social implications:

Over the years especially those Summer Noho Taio have been instrumental in bringing our students that aren’t connected to their iwi and we’ve had young people come up from Auckland.

The point that tauira travel from afar is amplified later in the interview, highlighting the value of Noho as a supplement to the commonplace gathering around funerals or community events. In contrast the Noho Taiao bring young people together in learning settings that serve to: ‘merge in our city whānau and our country kids all kind of working together’ (Participant 1).

Such outcomes promote Mauriora and evoke Te Mana Whakahaere. Participant 7 put it this way:

if you learn about the environment, how the moon works, and all of that, then you are becoming more self-determining as an individual, also as a family, and as a tribe and subtribe … So that’s the bigger picture for us.

Understanding relationships to land in a cultural and historical context, creates a sense of belonging and nurtures whakapapa connections to whānau, hapū and iwi, which in turn encourage actions of care, protection and sustainability (Waiora) required for health and wellbeing.

Tauira success

Building individual and peer-group success enhances the potential for societal participation, and so contributes to the TPM task of Te Oranga, meaning Noho are both educational and health promoting. Data convey a sense that rangatahi as learners have been excluded and degraded by education and wider colonial systems in which they are immersed. Participant 7 summed up the redress that Noho Taiao offer:

Māori children are allowed to do science and it is not scary and they are not unintelligent. Noho Taiao is a deliberate act of teaching and learning.

Here the impediments tauira face are emphasised, casting Noho Taiao as a means to challenge and disrupt the ideological stereotypes that have been constructed around Māori and science. This is necessary to combat the health-demoting intergenerational experiences that Māori have accumulated around education and science in particular. These denigrations call down an unapologetic promotion of tauira as active, competent, constructive citizens, well-equipped to take on the challenges facing iwi. Participant 6 spoke of an aim to:

reaffirm their sense of belonging, cultural identity, knowing who they are so they are able to stand proud but humble in this ever-changing world. That they may do so with a consciousness of knowing the delicate interconnectedness of themselves and others with their local and global environment.

Noho Taiao have a critical role to play in the reassertion of the success of tauira in education arising from applying a pedagogy that is more than pastoral in the usual sense. Knowing how tauira connect to whenua is seen as a central part of knowing themselves and feeling pride in their identity. Participant 2 saw Noho as powerful opportunities for groups of students to experience their own strengths and success, with love for land being the crucial element: ‘Everyone incorporates their talents but the main focus is the love for the environment’. The vision is for a mindfulness that equips rangatahi with the necessary tools and grounding to belong in and contribute to the evolving world they experience.

Reframing knowledge

In a fundamental way, Noho Taiao reinterpret methods and knowledge, highlighting Māori approaches and strengths in ways resonant with the TPM task of Mauriora that complement or extend science. Participant 6 put it this way:

[in] te ao Māori there is history of wānanga/marae-based learning … Learning that their tupuna (ancestors) and themselves are all ‘cultural scientists’ in their own right and they have the potential to excel and attend university to pursue a career in fields of science, Pūtaiao, environmental/taiao.

A key insight was that, while science concepts are very important in understanding our world, the Noho Taiao way was to begin with a relevant kaupapa Māori topic and incorporate both the knowledge of their tupuna and science curriculum concepts to enhance understanding of their world. Returning to greater involvement with the whenua through place-based methods was described by Participant 5 as a more meaningful way to engage:

We’re looking at things to reconnect with the environment, and try and get our children out doing practical things on their own lands and so that they’re not just learning maths out of a book, they’re using it for meaningful things and they’re marrying up our traditional knowledge with science.’

The bridging of Noho Taiao and normal school-based knowledge was valued as a means of engaging and connecting tauira to place and people and normalising it as part of everyday life, rather than an isolated classroom subject.

Rangatahi enjoyed the variety of science-based practical kaitiakitanga activities, workshops and debates. These activities demonstrated to them that local environments were legitimate places of learning in the context of their lives and realities. Participant 4 made the explicit connection to health: ‘we are returning back to our old ways for our health’. Overall Noho Taiao articulate a vision reflecting all the TPM tasks, pointing to a Māori way of life centred on kaitiakitanga that, through participation, is inherently health promoting.

Discussion

Noho Taiao provided opportunities to bring together students with shared whakapapa links to Te Rārawa and other Te Hiku iwi from multiple secondary schools around the country. Immersing them in iwi histories, marae and environments involved specific knowledge about ancestors and their practices along with contemporary ways of knowing and being. The relational basis of the initiative, grounded in tikanga and mātauranga Māori provides a health-promoting environment that was supportive, informative and engaging. Some students were comfortable and experienced within their culture and the marae while others were not; some students were involved with science at school while others were not. Within each cohort, such understandings were quickly shared, allowing all to contribute and engage according to their strengths so that the identity and mana (authority) of the collective was upheld.

These elements overlap with the concepts and ideas of health promotion in ways that play through all stages of the Noho. Even seemingly mundane activities of working collaboratively to undertake chores at the marae model important aspects of tikanga Māori, reconnecting participants to each other and customary practices, reinforcing central messages of the Noho and delivering reassuring solidarity around the culture through the positive environment created.

Much conventional health promotion activity has tended to focus on healthy lifestyles and then expand to embrace other aspects. Placing whenua, as a key determinant of indigenous peoples’ health, at the centre of health promotion activity is entirely consistent with the Māori health promotion framework TPM and the approach taken in Noho Taiao. Whenua is located at the centre, and other domains that are conventionally separated are instead integrated. The result is a whenua-centred health promotion initiative that promotes wellbeing and may be considered as an education, health and/or environmental intervention. Further, Noho Taiao exemplifies decolonisation as a core tenet of indigenous Health Promotion. in whatever form it takes, decolonisation is critical to transformation that can eliminate disparities and realise potential.

Our analyses support an understanding that Te Rārawa Noho Taiao represent an established, constructive and tangible initiative that, although educationally, environmentally and culturally focused, can be seen as health promotion in the form advanced by TPM. The programme, which is led by Māori and experts and is conceived, developed and controlled by those leaders, enables the Māori to enhance determinants of health through reconnection with whenua, whānau, hapū and iwi, marae, te ao Māori and te taiao at large. It advances Māori education, strengthens identity, and builds Māori engagement and position in society, thereby improving Māori health.

The narrative and analyses presented here align strongly with Māori models of health and instantiate the conceptual framework foreshadowed by Tangata Whenua, Tangata Ora. In the reorientation of education away from the conventional classroom, it is no coincidence that the location of choice is the whenua because it is the way to learn for tangata whenua. The Noho use education for so much more than learning outcomes, grounding tauira in understandings of who they are, and how and where they connect and belong.

Linking the land, the people, and te ao Māori, using local environments as a basis for understanding their world, equips our young people with skills and a hunger for discovering and questioning, which are at the core of the approach. These capabilities include engagement, participation, constructive peer-processes, positive inter-generational linkages, stronger family interactions, community building and enhanced alignment to school/education, all of which are highly implicated in the creation and maintenance of health and wellbeing. The paper describes one successful step as young people in Te Hiku o Te Ika are introduced to their lands as a living laboratory at a time when rapid changes impacting on natural environments threaten the planet and the health, wellbeing and thriving of current and upcoming generations.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Professor Helen Moewaka Barnes (Te Kapotai, Ngapuhi-nui-tonu) is the Director of Whāriki and co-Director of the SHORE & Whariki Research Centre, College of Health, Massey University, Aotearoa, New Zealand. Helen is a multidisciplinary social scientist, with expertise in theory development, quantitative and qualitative methods and research design. She has particular interests in public health, Maori methods and methodologies, research ethics and tikanga, community engagement and research capacity building. Helen’s research areas currently include natural environments and health, life-course approaches to health and wellbeing, health promotion, health services research, identity and culture, parent and child health, and evaluation research.

Wendy Henwood, Te Rārawa, works with the Whariki Research group (Massey University) and Te Hiku Iwi Development Trust. Living and working from home in Hokianga she has been involved with public health projects and research in Maori communities for many years. She is particularly interested in the environment as a platform to improve social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing. She was involved in developing the Noho Taiao programme in 2009.

Joanne Murray, Te Aupouri, Te Rārawa, Ngati Hine, Ngapuhi, has a science and education background. Her current roles as Kaiwhakapūmau with Te Aho Tū Roa and Poutautoko o Te Tai Tokerau involve working alongside kura, kohanga, iwi, hapu, and marae groups on kaupapa Maori environmental projects / programmes and raising interest and knowledge in Pūtaiao (Maori science).

Pauline Waiti, Te Rārawa, Te Aupouri, has been involved in secondary school science teaching for over 30 years and became involved in the development and teaching of Putaiao since co-writing the Pūtaiao curriculum in the early 90’s. Her interest has always been about strategies to improve Māori participation and achievement in the sciences and the role Pūtaiao has in making this happen by acknowledging the maturanga and tikanga of our tūpuna. She is currently involved in developing appropriate Pūtaiao assessment resources based on the current curriculum. She has been involved in the Noho Taiao programme in the last few years.

Mina Pomare-Peita, Te Rārawa, has been involved with teaching and education for more than 30 years. She has been Principal of Te Kura Taumata o Panguru in Hokianga for many years and collaborated with a social justice agency (Caritas) to write a resource on the Warawara forest/ngahere. Her interest is in student achievement based on “te reo me ona tikanga” and using local environments as a place of learning. She was involved in developing the Noho Taiao programme in 2009.

Selena Bercic, Te Rārawa, Ngati Whatua, has a background in bilingual education. Her current position at Far North REAP as Kaitautoko Matauranga Education Support for schools and kura kaupapa Maori supports 39 schools of the far north. She specialises in Maori performing arts, music and culturally responsive pedagogy. Working with the Noho Taiao programme for 9 years and has grown a passion for environmental sustainability.

Rebecca Chee is of the Diné people of Northern Arizona and she comes from a small community on the Navajo Reservation called White Cone. She is currently completing her Bachelors of Public Health degree through Northern Arizona University from Flagstaff, Arizona. She is interested in exploring how indigenous people engage themselves in science in education.

Mishayla Mitchell is of the His Sheaves, Leaf Clan and born to the Zuni Water Edge clan. She is from Aneth, Utah and identifies as a Navajo woman. Currently, she is completing her bachelor’s degree in Public Health at Northern Arizona University and seeking research internship programs within the United States to focus on health science topics ahead of postgraduate study.

Professor Tim McCreanor (Pakeha) is a senior researcher at SHORE & Whariki Research Centre, Massey University in Auckland New Zealand. He has longstanding interests in social justice, Maori/Pakeha relations and decolonisation, particularly as illuminated using qualitative research approaches, in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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