Matauranga Wahine: Teaching Maori Women's Knowledge Alongside Feminism

Abstract

There are always at least two stories that emerge when students on a course are split into separate ethnic groups. This is the story of the Maori women academics who taught and tutored Maori, Pacific Islands and Asian women in a university course exploring feminism and matauranga wahine (women's knowledge) (see Jones, this issue). They tell of their own experiences and also what they saw happening to students who were facilitated in exploring their own cultural stories before encountering white feminism. They also talk of their experience of teaching non-Maori students.

Even when those struggles are not our own: Storytelling and solidarity in a feminist social justice organization

“…Storytelling, as one such practice, has long been significant to feminism and attempts to achieve gender‐based justice in and through organizations (cf. Gherardi & Poggio, ; hooks, ; Jenkins & Pihama, ; Srigley, Zembrzycki, & Iacovetta, ). Storytelling is argued to be important for fostering solidarity as it helps to form emotional and ethical connections between women who are different (Vachhani & Pullen, ).…”

“…In spite of the widespread issue of violence against women, however, it would be unwise to see the experiences of this violence as universal. To do so would overlook the centrality of difference which feminists of colour and non‐Western feminists have demonstrated is vital to solidarity and social change (e.g., Green, ; hooks, ; Jenkins & Pihama, ; Roces & Edwards, ). The differences in women's experiences must form the foundations from which feminists find ways of collectively addressing widespread forms of inequality (Ozkazanc‐Pan, ).…”

“…In organizational studies feminist and decolonial scholars have made compelling calls to challenge the dominance and limitations of Western thought by unfolding what scholars can learn from these traditions (Contu, ; Henry & Pene, ; Mir & Mir, ). Inspired by the decolonial practices of my colleagues, the broader debates about decolonial scholarship and the practices of Māori feminists (Henry & Pene, ; Irwin, , ; Jenkins & Pihama, ; Simmonds, ), I explored the storytelling practices of my colleagues within the framework of mātauranga Māori. The storytelling practices respectively considered the land as actively productive of our identities and knowledge; positioned individual actions and beliefs as part of a non‐chronological intergenerational inheritance; and conceptualized the personal as collective.…”

“…What is interesting about these practices, then, is that they develop our imaginative capacity for how solidarity can be thought of and fostered between feminists in different contexts. Feminist and other scholars can learn from and incorporate similar practices into organizing processes if they are considered appropriate for addressing a particular issue and social context (hooks, ; Jenkins & Pihama, ; Roces & Edwards, ). The latter point is echoed in the conceptual approach to solidarity that I argued the storytelling practices foster.…”

The emergence of science communication in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Māori studies were taught at Auckland University from 1952 and at Victoria University of Wellington from 1967 [Mead, 1983], but there was little to no discussion of Mātauranga Māori in science until the 2000s [Jenkins and Pihama, 2001;Hirini, 2006;Henwood, 2007;Lyver et al, 2008;Crawford, 2009;Moller, 2009;Moller et al, 2009].…”