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Decolonizing the Mind and Spirit: Maori Education in Pākehā New Zealand

Prepared by Kawika Makanani as part of the Fulbright-Hays Seminars to New Zealand 2003.

Grade: 12

Executive summary

The Māori of New Zealand are one among the many indigenous peoples who have been colonized by a Western Euro-American power, and who have suffered a similar fate: losses of land, sovereignty, population, culture, and dignity. However, the Māori have become a beacon to their indigenous cousins around the world for their resistance against colonization, and their vigorous efforts to revitalize their culture and identity. While there are many sites where these efforts are observable, perhaps the most important is education, for the Māori recognize that change will be most effectively realized through the younger generations as they pass through the schools.

Finding that the Crown school system has merely served to reproduce the dominant Pākehā society, and failed to adequately serve Māori children, Māori elders took it upon themselves in the early 1980s to reform the education system. While much work remains to be done, monumental changes have occurred.

The Māori insist that what they have done is singular, and cannot be imported whole by other peoples; nevertheless, they are willing to share their ideas and experiences with other indigenous peoples. Despite major differences between the situation of Māori and indigenous Hawai'ians, it is important for Hawai'ian youth to be exposed to the educational initiatives that are benefiting their Māori cousins. Not only will they see the possibility of achieving a more promising future, they will be better able to recognize the barriers that lie in their way, learn how to overcome them, and thus ensure a preferred future.

One note for this section concerns Polynesian orthography. Hawai'ian language includes the use of two diacriticals, one being a glottal stop, which is commonly represented in text as a reverse apostrophe. The other is a macron, a horizontal line over a vowel, which denotes that the sound is held just a wee bit longer than an unmarked vowel. Since there is no electronic standard for these two diacriticals, and to avoid confusion the glottal stop will simply be denoted by an apostrophe and the vowels and macrons will go unmarked. Only a few Māori dialects employ the glottal stop, and there are no cases in this document; the vowels and macrons are as numerous in te reo Māori as in Hawai'ian, but they, too, will be ignored.

Table of contents

• Summary
• Audience
• Content Key Questions I
• Objectives
• Materials
• Strategies/Methodologies
• Assessment (Evaluation)
• Additional Resources
• Appendix A: Content Key Questions II
• Appendix B: Comparative History Of Māori And Maoli Education

Decolonizing the Mind and Spirit: Māori Education in Pākehā New Zealand

makananik.pdf (102kB)