This thesis is about seeking empowerment through informed reflection. It articulates changes to Maori identity and culture when whanau leave their traditional homelands in Aotearoa and move across the Tasman Sea to live in Australia. The thesis presents a community narrative derived from autoethnographic reflections, short stories and informal conversations I gathered from youth, families and community groups during individual interviews and focus groups. These storylines help to illustrate how whanau have managed to exist as Maori in another country without their tribal system close by to support the traditional and cultural way of life. The thesis also highlights how the research methods used in this study enable culturally competent practices and it endeavors to describe the self-organizing, dynamic and emerging behaviour of our Maori community. In undertaking this research and through writing the thesis I have chosen to follow a particular format. This is not to flaunt convention, but to find a position, my space, a Maori place amidst the conversations and storylines that articulate living in and between two worlds. In doing this I have sought to manage the research and writing process by having recourse to a conceptual design. The work is informed by Kaupapa Maori and Complexity theory. It is autoethnographic in style moving back and forth between an insider's passionate perspective and an outsider's impassive one (Van Maanen 1988) all the while I tell stories and engage in conversation about what I/we see and how this can help me/us to know how trans-Tasman migration has influenced a change in the way we practice our Maori ways of being and knowing. As the inquirer, my role is to be the facilitator of the emergent in which bicultural issues, scholarly insights, and the 'new' in the 'old' narrative unfolds. I then turn to my Tupuna, Matua Tekoteko who now becomes the kaitiaki or caretaker of this work. He holds it within for safekeeping.
Date of Award | 2012 |
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Original language | English |
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- Maori (New Zealand people)
- whanau
- Aotearoa
- New Zealand
- emigration and immigration
- immigrants
- Australia
- autoethnography
- identity
- culture
Whakaaro Rua - two ways of knowing : understanding how identity and culture changes when Maori migrate across the Tasman to live in Australia
Henare-Solomona, R. (Author). 2012
Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis