2 A compelling visual and relational metaphor:

Introduction

A rethinking of conventional research practices made its mark with the publication of Linda Smith’s seminal work, Decolonizing Methodologies (Smith, 1999). A number of passages in her book have proven to be formidable challenges to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. Smith has prompted researchers to explore Māori and Indigenous epistemology as fact, as practice and as critique. Her contentions cover various frames of reference, including interpersonal, intertribal, institutional, national and international. Smith challenges beliefs that “the West knows best” by referring to the following:

Indeed, the West has been made to more seriously ponder engaging with diversity, as well as the political and cultural outlooks that shape the postmodern era – in which differences between people are recognised and rewarded simply because they exist. In the breaking of this new dawn, postmodernism challenges conventional notions of order, universality and hierarchy, on the grounds that these try to impose a contrived uniformity on a changeable and, oftentimes, irregular world. (Li, 1999)

Disparities in opinion should come as no surprise: in societies historically organised around principles of conformity, rationality, consensus and control, appeals for diversity tend to be dismissed as disorderly and disruptive. While contradictions still abound in this climate, it appears that an increasing number of researchers are becoming more amenable to ‘listening to culture’ and to adopting a research framework(s) that justifies an excursion into a new domain that has cultural relevance.

Relationships

We, Ted Glynn and Angus Macfarlane, have worked according to  the mantra of ‘listening to culture’ for 30 years; we began a professional research relationship in our work for a Crown entity (Special Education Services), and later as bicultural curriculum coordinators of a national training programme for the Ministry of Education. Significant publications and conference presentations have emanated from our partnership. Almost uncannily, in line with Smith’s notions, as researchers we were prompted to explore Māori and Indigenous epistemology as fact, as critique and as practice. Making mistakes along the way, and learning lessons from these mistakes, we realised that the current reality, in terms of the place of culture in research and practice, needed to change – because the world does not always readily embrace cultural difference. We looked more broadly, for an informed cultural analysis – one that does not rob researchers of their hitherto held beliefs and principles, but rather that encourages them to adopt a more inclusive lens. This change is indeed happening in some quarters, but there is scope for the trend to expand. This chapter provides several examples of how the He Awa Whiria framework may contribute to shifting the trend in the right direction.

Since 2011, the He Awa Whiria framework (Macfarlane and Macfarlane, 2019) has had a significant impact on the development and focus of research carried out both in physical locations and within cultural contexts that hold particular value and meaning within te ao Māori. Often referred to as a ‘braided river’ approach, He Awa Whiria is inspired by the many braided rivers that define much of the landscape of the Canterbury Plains in the South Island of New Zealand.

As a framework, He Awa Whiria provides a conceptual and methodological approach to collaboration between Western science and mātauranga Māori, and it also honours the Treaty of Waitangi relationship in New Zealand, between Māori and the Crown.

Metaphors often provoke new understandings and perspectives that challenge us to think about and engage with our world in different, and sometimes surprising, ways. He Awa Whiria is a compelling visual and  relational metaphor – one that can transform how researchers identify and position ourselves as Treaty partners. He Awa Whiria can also transform how we interact as researchers working with Māori people and Māori communities.

Metaphor

He Awa Whiria challenges researchers to think about how a great river is formed from the joining together of many different streams, all starting from different places, yet all carrying life-sustaining water from the realm of Ranginui (Sky Father) to the realm of Tangaroa (god of the sea). From time to time these streams may converge and coalesce, all the while progressing in the same direction. Also, from time to time, these streams may diverge and separate, and progress in different directions. The visual metaphor of He Awa Whiria offers a wide range of opportunities to identify and position ourselves as researchers and Treaty partners within cultural spaces that are essentially Māori.

Identity and positioning are closely interconnected and interactive, just as the many streams within He Awa Whiria are closely interconnected and interactive. How we choose to position ourselves when we find ourselves in Māori cultural spaces both reveals and defines our identity. Correspondingly, how we nurture and guard our identity influences how we position ourselves in cultural spaces. As researchers committed to deepening our relationships with Māori in accord with the Treaty, we have important choices on offer. Those of us who are Māori may choose to position ourselves as tangata whenua (Indigenous people of the land). Others of us, who are people, or descendants of people, who arrived in New Zealand later than tangata whenua, may choose to locate as non-Māori – that is, as descendants of people from other nations. Nevertheless, whether we choose to identify and position ourselves as tangata whenua or as non-Māori, we can all also choose to operate as tangata Tiriti (non-Māori partners to the Treaty). This group of people respect and live the Treaty, rather than merely talking about it (Glynn, 2021).

The He Awa Whiria metaphor offers further important choices for researchers. When domain-specific knowledge and research expertise lead us to work in Māori cultural spaces, we can choose to identify and position ourselves in different ways, including as experts or novices, as respectful visitors or suspicious strangers, or as objective observers or active participants. We choose our positioning so as to safeguard the mana of our educational institutions, or to safeguard the mana of our Māori colleagues and their communities. We may also aspire to safeguard the mana of both, and this calls for us to be at ease working in both Indigenous and Western cultural spaces. However, this choice pre-supposes a great deal of lived experience researching alongside Māori people (Glynn, 2021).

The compelling visual impact of He Awa Whiri suggests a myriad of touch points; here, individual streams interact, representing emerging relationships and interactions. Individual streams might represent whānau, hapū and iwi, and the river as a whole might represent te ao Māori. He Awa Whiria could also represent the relationships between te ao Māori and the Western world. All of these different relationships need to be negotiated with care. We also need to carefully evaluate which streams are truly part of the river’s current flow and direction. Yet, it is clear that all streams have something important to contribute to the river, because they are all grounded in Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) – all share the mission of returning te wai ora (life-giving water) from the domain of Ranginui to the domain of Tangaroa, sustaining life throughout their individual journeys.

Belonging

Whatever our own specific domains of knowledge and expertise, He Awa Whiria challenges researchers to understand the socio-cultural contexts of the processes we are engaged with. Whether we are positioned as tangata whenua, non-Māori or Treaty partners, we need to appreciate the fluidity and reciprocity of the exchange of knowledge between the river and the streams. People interacting with the various streams are connected through a shared commitment to a research project. Researching together is not so much an issue of ownership of the river and the streams, but more an issue of joining with people who feel they belong to the research project and have something to contribute. New knowledge can be generated, treasured, transferred and shared across each stream and the river as a whole.

Yet, there remains a major cultural divide in how Māori and non-Māori understand the difference between owning the river and belonging to the river. Our identity and positioning on matters like this inevitably impact on our credibility as researchers and as Treaty partners; they impact what we learn and what we don’t learn from engaging in collaborative research with tangata whenua researchers and their communities. Our identity and positioning as non-Māori researchers can impact on the entire research process, and can have implications for the mana motuhake (autonomy and independence) of tangata whenua, our Treaty partners (Bishop and Glynn, 1992; 1998). It seems that traces of cultural dominance and subordination within the domains of policy, language, research and pedagogies that were identified over two decades ago may still remain (Bishop and Glynn, 1999). To avoid our research being seen as just another example of impositional research carried out by outsiders, we need to negotiate carefully with tangata whenua throughout the entire research process, not just through official launchings of research initiatives. Such undertakings will contribute to improved collaborative research relationships and personal relationships.

The following research questions and areas of focus provide a good starting point for how we might involve tangata whenua in each aspect of the research process. Are tangata whenua involved in:

• developing and refining the research questions
• selecting appropriate methodologies
• deciding what data needs to be collected to answer a research question
• deciding what ‘counts’ as data
• deciding how data should be collected (and by whom)
• interpreting what the research questions and research findings ‘mean’; and
• determining how and to whom the research findings should be reported?

These questions are essential, because researchers whose work positions them within te ao Māori, and those whose research positions them within Western worldviews, may hold substantially different cultural knowledge and understandings of what it means to conduct research (Berryman et al., 2013). There are significant cultural issues to be addressed and negotiated concerning tikanga and kawa (specific cultural protocols), and above all, there are issues of mana motuhake to be managed.

Furthermore, researcher learnings and understandings may differ when we are working alongside whānau, hapū or iwi, compared to with Māori more generally. If research negotiations are all conducted at a pan-Māori level, the mana of individual whānau, hapū or iwi may be overlooked or marginalised.

Researchers need to identify and address these areas with Māori researchers and communities before the research process begins. Some non-Māori researchers may have misgivings about including Māori in research, but this positioning has a counterpart – some Māori researchers may have misgivings about including non-Māori in research. These misgivings may relate to issues of ownership and control, rather than issues of participation. Collaborating with researchers who position themselves as owning the research is likely to present a greater challenge for Māori researchers, than collaborating with those who feel a sense of belonging in that research.

Positioning

So far, we have endeavoured to point out that researcher identity and positioning can impact on the relationships between researchers and those whose lives are being researched. But there are also important identity and positioning issues concerning academic supervisors of research by Māori students in Māori cultural contexts. The following anecdote illustrates the kind of issues that can arise.

In the 1990s, I (Ted Glynn) was involved in the doctoral thesis of Angus Macfarlane, who was fortunate to have Te Arawa Confederation of Tribes leader Dr. Hiko-o-te-Rangi Hohepa as a mātauranga Māori mentor. Angus also had further support and assistance from other kaumatua (Māori elders) and cultural advisors. Angus’s thesis was important because it was among the few educational research studies of the day that focused on studying Māori students who were succeeding, rather than on those who were failing – and on the role of culturally responsive pedagogy in this success factor.

To gain university approval for the doctoral research proposal, we both worked step by step through the regulations and accountability procedures laid down by the enrolling university. These included assessing the qualifications, experience and suitability of the candidate for researching with human participants, approving the specific thesis topic proposed, recommending the appointment of supervisors experienced and published in the candidate’s chosen research field, and gaining approval from the institution’s Research and Ethics Committee for the procedures, design and methodology to be followed. We believed we had done everything we needed to ensure that we had met the university’s accountability requirements, that ‘all boxes had been ticked’, and that the research was ‘ready to go’.

However, I had given very little thought or attention to the need to ensure that the university’s requirements and procedures were accountable to Māori and, in this case, to the leadership of Te Arawa. But Angus had given this matter a great deal of thought. He informed me that both he and I now needed to present the proposal to the Te Arawa Trust Board for them to approve. Even though Angus was proposing to research among his own people, on a topic that could provide worthwhile knowledge of benefit to them, he was nevertheless bringing with him a non-Māori research supervisor, from a non-Māori tertiary institution, which could possibly pose a challenge to the mana motuhake of Te Arawa.

We duly arrived at the Te Arawa Trust Board offices in Rotorua, and I was ready to do ‘my’ part in supporting and ‘approving’ Angus’s research on behalf of the university. However, in defining my role in this way, I had positioned myself as an outside expert, and I realised that this positioning could be seen as an intrusion into the cultural contexts within which the Te Arawa Trust Board operates. My positioning risked my being seen as challenging the board’s mana motuhake. I should not have positioned myself as an expert in this context. Rather, I would have been better to position myself as a respectful visitor, as a novice in this cultural context, and as a friend who cares.

Board members questioned us thoroughly about how the research would be evaluated and reported, and who would do this. They informed us that they had a role in this research process, and that it was not just our mana as researchers and the mana of the university that were at stake, but also their mana as leaders within Te Arawa. I did not expect that seeking approval for a doctoral research project would entail scrutiny of me. I learned an important lesson that day: that however I might choose to position myself in te ao Māori, Māori may choose to position me differently! I learned that university supervisory processes themselves could be experienced as colonising and impositional. Essentially, I appreciated that a braiding of the rivers – in this case of knowledge and institutions – should have been adopted.

Professional and personal relationships are closely entwined

Our experiences in researching alongside Māori colleagues in both Māori and non-Māori cultural contexts has taught us that successful collaborative research is dynamic, and depends hugely on the strength and the depth of our professional and our personal relationships. This may surprise some non-Māori researchers, because so much of our Western tertiary professional development and training has relied on the separation of professional and personal relationships. Warnings like ‘don’t get too emotionally attached or involved with your clients or your research participants, because this could threaten your position as an objective researcher’ are commonplace.

Realities are quite different within te ao Māori. There are fewer boundaries between professional and personal relationships, and these boundaries can be quite permeable. As a researcher, you are expected to bring your professional self and your personal self into your research. Building a professional relationship that excludes building personal relationships seems starkly out of place in te ao Māori. It is crucial for non- Māori researchers to understand and accommodate this difference when entering into collaborative research partnerships with Māori researchers. However, the He Awa Whiria metaphor suggests an approach that is flexible and expansive enough to support researchers in negotiating ways to manage these differences.

He iwi kē koutou,
He iwi kē tatou.
Engari i tēnei wa,
Tātou, tātou ē.

You are different people,
We are different people.
But here and now, and with this kaupapa,
We can work together.

Acknowledging and accepting cultural differences, and being comfortable and making friends while in Māori cultural spaces, are essential learnings for non-Māori who wish to engage in collaborative research with Māori. A key feature of the He Awa Whiria framework is that neither stream consumes the other. Rather, each is autonomous, bringing with it a valuable and unique contribution to each stage of the research. He Awa Whiria, being a strong relational metaphor, offers a productive pathway to commencing a strong collaborative research relationship:

1. Begin by acknowledging the differences in our cultural identities and positionings.
2. Learn to work through, not around, these differences as friends, not as adversaries.
3. Search for new pathways to engage and learn from each other, across different cultural contexts and worldviews.

If we aspire to build our research partnerships in this way, our collaboration can become more dynamic, more relationships-based, and more mutually respectful and trusting.

Non-Māori who aspire to be effective Treaty partners should identify and position ourselves in a way that makes it easy for Māori to connect with us at a personal level. Connecting first at a personal level will help to build a relationship of trust, and open further opportunities to learn more about each other. Māori want to know, first, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Where do you come from?’, not ‘Where do you work?’ and ‘What is your status and position?’ Building professional relationships that are separated from, and may marginalise or even exclude, personal relationships will not help connections to form.

Conclusions

At the 2022 He Awa Whiria Colloquium held at the University of Canterbury, delegates were presented with numerous examples of excellent research by Māori professionals working in tertiary education settings and government agencies. The presentations covered a wide range of academic disciplines and research topics.

A powerful theme that emerged across all presentations was of Māori researchers and professionals claiming and asserting their identity as Māori, and also positioning themselves as agents of change within their academic institutions or government agencies. Many of the presenters were articulating a common commitment to persuading their institutions to engage more frequently and comprehensively with clients, and with clients’ whānau and communities. The presenters’ personal and professional focus was clearly on affording their clients and client communities greater agency.

There is great relational power and connectivity inherent within the He Awa Whiria metaphor, which is enhanced by a commitment from Māori professionals who position themselves as agents of change. This bodes well for continuing Māori development and advancement within New Zealand. Rather than positioning Māori communities as sites and opportunities for researchers to extract and export Indigenous histories, knowledge and skills for professional advantage, He Awa Whiria encourages researchers and practitioners to form partnerships that are caring, receptive and more responsive to the needs of New Zealand communities, in accord with the Treaty.

References

Berryman, M., SooHoo, S. & Nevin, A. (2013), ‘Culturally responsive methodologies from the margins’, in M. Berryman, S. Soohoo & A. Nevin (eds), Culturally Responsive Methodologies (1st edn., 1–13), (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing).

Bishop, R. & Glynn, T. (1992), ‘He kanohi kitea: Conducting and evaluating educational research’, New Zealand Journal of Educational Research, 27(2), 3–13.

Bishop, R. & Glynn, T. (1998), ‘Achieving cultural integrity within education in New Zealand’, in K. Cushner (ed.), Intercultural Perspectives on Intercultural Education (New York: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates).

Bishop, R. & Glynn, T. (1999), Culture Counts: Changing power relations in education (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press).

Glynn, T. (2021), Living the Treaty: Personal reflections (Wellington: Psychological Society, Rōpū Mātai Hinengaro o Aotearoa, in partnership, with Te Rū Rangahau).

Li, P.S. (1999), ‘The multiculturalism debate’, in P.S. Li (ed.), Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada (2nd edn., 148–77), (Oxford, Toronto: Oxford University Press).

Macfarlane, A. & Macfarlane, S. (2019), ‘Listen to culture: Māori scholars’ plea to researchers’, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand: https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2019.1661855

Smith, L.T. (1999), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (London: Zed Books).