Understanding Indigenous Exploitation Through Performance Based Research Funding Reviews in Colonial States

Abstract

Countries with significant indigenous populations, such as Australia, New Zealand and the Nordic countries, are providing increased support for improvements in the number of indigenous academics represented in higher education and engaged in research. Such developments have occurred at the same time as the implementation of performance-based research funding systems. However, despite the significance of such systems for academic careers and knowledge diffusion there has been relatively little consideration of the way within which they meet the needs of indigenous academics and knowledges. Drawing primarily on the New Zealand context, this perspective paper questions the positioning of Māori researchers and Māori research epistemologies (Kaupapa Maori) within the Performance Based Research Fund and the contemporary neoliberal higher education system. It is argued that the present system, rather than being genuinely inclusive, serves to reinforce the othering of Māori episteme and therefore perpetuates the hegemony of Western and colonial epistemologies and research structures. As such, there is a need to raise fundamental questions about the present ecologies of knowledge that performance based research systems create not only in the New Zealand higher education research context but also within other countries that seek to advance indigenous research.

Burdened in Business: Pacific Early Career Academic Experiences with Promoting Pacific Research Methodologies in the Business Academy

“…This push to indigenise is mostly driven by the recent review of the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) standards, which implored the tertiary education sector to promote the value of Indigenous and Pacific research. 37 This recentring of values has provided more opportunities to foster new research relationships for Pacific researchers within our disciplines, and also in transdisciplinary ways. However, this opportunity also creates concerns about being confined to a tokenistic status within a research team.…”

Decolonising the Marketing Academy: An Indigenous Māori Perspective on Engagement, Methodologies and Practices

“…merely a set of tools), or whether there is something implicit in its use with respect to how it frames consumption, culture and practices. In addition to such issues, we argue, lies the need to further examine the institutional context in universities and business schools within which marketing is situated, as well as the way in which indigenous peoples (including Māori), may be used as tokens by organisations in their claim that 'something has been done'; by hiring an indigenous staff member (often by attracting them from other institutions), or by putting up Māori language signage (including on toilet doors), in addressing the deep structural problems that exist for indigenous people/Māori in the university sector (Love & Hall, 2020).…”