20 December 2016
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A Victoria University of
Wellington law researcher studying Māori constitutional principles is focusing
on traditional kōrero pūrākau (stories) rather than documents, statutes and
court reports.
Dr Carwyn Jones, a
Senior Lecturer in Victoria’s School of Law, has received one of three new
Treaty of Waitangi Research Fellowships awarded as part of the University’s
commitment to ‘Enriching national culture’, one of its areas of academic
distinctiveness.
The
Fellowships are for researchers engaging with the foundational importance of
Māori culture to New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi as a partnership that
enables communities to foster dynamic and productive interactions.
Dr Jones aims to use his
Fellowship project to find mechanisms to ensure Māori
constitutional principles underpin the application of the Treaty of
Waitangi.
The
project builds on his research identifying aspects of legal reasoning and
process in the kōrero
pūrākau of his iwi, Ngāti Kahungunu.
“To explore the operation of Māori constitutional
practice from inside the Māori legal system itself, so as to understand Māori
constitutional traditions on their own terms, requires the constitutional
scholar or practitioner to look for statements of constitutional law and
principle in places other than written constitutional documents, statutes and
court reports,” says Dr Jones.
“Māori constitutional law and principles can be found
in a range of cultural expressions, including kōrero pūrākau, waiata (songs), whakairo (carvings) and karakia
(prayers/chants). These sources reveal, among other things, particular
patterns of authority and decision-making (and constraints on constitutional
authority).“I will collect a set of kōrero pūrākau that demonstrate the way Māori concepts such as whanaungatanga (centrality of kinship), mana (spiritually sanctioned authority) and tapu/noa (the balance between sacred and the everyday) provide guidance on constitutional matters, in the same way concepts such as the rule of law and the separation of powers inform existing constitutional arrangements of the New Zealand state.”
Another of the Fellowships has gone to Dr Nikki
Hessell, a Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media
Studies.
Dr Hessell will look at the diplomacy involved in
journalist Rēweti
Tūhorouta Kōhere’s use of British poetry quotations to reinforce points
in his articles in Māori language newspaper Te Toa Takitini during
1926—a year when Māori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi were being contested
in parliamentary and popular debates on the Māori Land Amendement and Māori
Land Claims Adjustment Act.
“Because the target readership of the newspaper is so
clearly Māori,
I’m interested in the fact Kohere sometimes prints the quotations in English as well,” says Dr
Hessell. “I think part of what he’s doing is trying to indicate to a Pākehā audience that
some of their culture is being used in this way. It’s a way of reaching out and
saying, ‘We are interested in your literature, in your culture, and we are
talking about it.’“So I see it as a way of building a bridge to a Pākehā audience that can’t read the Māori content of the newspaper necessarily but will know they are not being ignored.”
Dr Hessell’s Fellowship research is part of a larger
book project in which she is also studying use of British poetry for indigenous
diplomacy in Africa and the United States.
The third recipient of a Treaty of Waitangi Research Fellowship is Dr Simon Perris, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies.
Dr Perris aims to remedy national and international neglect of Agathe Thornton (1910–2006), a distinguished classicist and scholar of Māori oral literature, who he describes as “one of Aotearoa’s unsung cultural heroines”.
As well as recuperating Thornton’s work and bringing
it to a new audience, Dr Perris will use Thornton as “a starting point for
rethinking the very idea of classical–Māori comparisons”.
He sees himself as following her lead: “As a scholar of
languages, literature and culture, and as a Pākehā living and working in Aotearoa, my
aspiration for this Fellowship is to inspire people, especially other non-Māori, to take Māori language, myth and literature
seriously.”
Dr Maria Bargh, co-chair of Victoria’s ‘Enriching national culture’ steering
group and head of the University’s Te Kawa a Māui/School of Māori Studies, says
the three Fellowship recipients exemplify the kind of cross-cultural and
transdisciplinary inquiry that makes Victoria New Zealand’s leading
institution for vigorous, imaginative and challenging research on national
culture.
“We are delighted to
be able to provide this extra support for Dr Jones, Dr Hessell and Dr Perris
through these Fellowships and very much look forward to the results of their
research
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