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This research project focused on Māori youth and documenting their social territories using multi-media visual data generated by the participants, in conjunction with wānanga and university-based practitioners and students in photography and film media. The researchers employed new methods in visual sociology and worked collaboratively with Māori youth and their iwi communities. Relationships were established with communities within Ngāpuhi, Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Toa, Ngāi Tahu, across urban, semi-urban, small town and rural areas.

Efforts have been made to develop protocols for the use and handling of blood samples, but at the time of this study starting, the formation of guidelines that take into account the needs and views of Māori had not been completed. Guided by Kaupapa Māori research methodologies, this study acknowledged He Korowai Oranga (The Ministry of Health’s Māori Health Strategy) and critiqued non-Māori views of genetic information and kaitiakitanga of this information.

This project focused on kaiako literacy instruction practices and tauira learning pertaining to reading comprehension and Māori vocabulary development. It involved five Kura Kaupapa Māori schools located in rural communities or small rural townships. Kura staff and researchers were involved in a collaborative process involving the collection, analysis and feedback of student achievement and classroom observation data. The first year of the project involved collecting baseline data to develop literacy learning and teaching profiles.

Conscious of the lack of serious inquiry into Kapa Haka, the CEO of Te Matatini Inc, the National Organisation for Kapa Haka in Aotearoa New Zealand approached Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand’s Maori Centre of Research Excellence (NPM), to make a start on rectifying this situation. This programme of research seeks to better appreciate the value and benefits of Kapa Haka to our present context and, importantly, future vision, in turn providing clear evidence and well-articulated arguments required to support balanced decision-making, investment and future development.

Joe Hawke was a young boy when his people were forcibly removed from the place he knew as home; the Ngāti Whātua papakāinga at Ōkahu Bay, which was burned to the ground in a move regarded by the government of the day as the best resolution. The destruction of the papakāinga was one of numerous events dating back to the nineteenth century which saw successive governments gradually and deliberately wrest Ngāti Whātua of Ōrākei from their lands.

Without Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand research on evolution hailed as a breakthrough by the world’s leading news media would never have happened. LIKE MANY A scientific race, it came down to the wire. When Dr Shane Wright, at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland, published new findings on the speed of evolution in top scientific journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a rival team from Florida followed home just three weeks behind.

Now largely surrounded by downtown Napier, Te Whanganui-a-Orotū (the Ahuriri Estuary), has seen decades of agricultural, industrial, and urban activity that have transformed this once pristine cultural and food resource into a sink for environmental contaminants. Pushing the lagoon floor up two metres, the region’s 1931 earthquake only added to reclamation and pollution of food stocks.

Project Purpose: Timely registration rates with lead maternity carers (LMC) for Māori are low, and research is critically needed to investigate methods of reaching Māori women sooner and to encourage engagement with health professionals.

For Māori artists, as any other, recognition overseas can be vital. While sculptor Dr Brett Graham (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura) and audio-visual artist Rachael Rākena (Kāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi) had already built a strong following at home, their success at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 2007 was confirmation of Māori-inspired art’s international impact – and fulfilled a dream of exhibiting at a major world venue.