Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development (Te Ara Poutama)
Permanent link for this community
The Faculty of Māori and Indegenous Development research expertise covers a broad spectrum from te reo and tikanga Māori to Māori media and multimedia. We are excited about the opportunities our expertise and unique support provides postgraduate students in these areas.
Browse
Browsing Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development (Te Ara Poutama) by Title
Now showing 1 - 20 of 85
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemA chequered renaissance: the evolution of Maori society, 1984-2004(Te Kaharoa, 2009) Moon, P.This article traces aspects of the evolution of Maori society in the two decades following the Hui Taumata in 1984. Issues of language, political and self-determination, and Treaty settlements are explored for their contribution to this evolution.
- ItemA critical reflection of ethical issues in research(Te Kaharoa, 2008) McNeill, H.This article uses the concept of matauranga as a starting point as a device for exploring concepts of Maori mental wellness. Issues of the role of culture are explored in depth, both from theoretical and application perspectives. The iwi of Tuhoe are the focus of attention in the examination of these themes.
- ItemAnimals of Aotearoa: Kaupapa Māori Summaries(Routledge, 2023-01-22) Stewart, GThis article summarizes Māori knowledge of a selected range of animals through the literature as a first step in undertaking research into the potential of incorporating Māori concepts into animal ethics topics for senior school and post-school biology education. This article is based on a critical Māori “reading” of existing literature, a writing process that both collects and analyzes data from available records, examined through a Kaupapa Māori (i.e., Māori-centered lens). The scientific category of “animal” does not exist in te ao Māori (the Māori world), so the approach taken below is to give an introductory synopsis of Māori knowledge of a sample of animals of Aotearoa, mindful that Māori “knowledge” includes and embeds a Māori understanding of ethics. This summary of Māori knowledge of animals is presented in six sections: kurī (dog), kiore (rat), manu (birds), ika (fish), ngārara (reptiles), and aitanga pepeke (insects/invertebrates). Key points emerge about Māori knowledge of animals, including a final point reflecting on the nature and status of a synopsis, a genre of particular relevance to Kaupapa Māori scholars studying Māori knowledge.
- ItemBig bananas in Kiribati(Te Ara Poutama, AUT University, 2015) Brown Pulu, T; Pamatatau, RNo abstract.
- ItemBook Review of G. D. Smithers and B. N. Newman (eds.), Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas, Nebraska, 2014, University of Nebraska Press, 509pp.(Te Ara Poutama - the Faculty of Maori and Indigenous Development, Auckland University of Technology, 2014-06-30) Moon, PIt is from the growing body of literature in indigenous issues that Native Diasporas has emerged. But as the title signals, this is more than just another work surveying the already well-traversed terrain of indigenous identity. Yes, this is a key and unavoidable component, and one that surfaces in various ways in each of its fifteen chapters, but the emphasis on diasporas promises opportunities for all sorts of comparatively little-explored insights into the construct of indigeneity. The subtitle places at least some of this anticipated analysis in the context of ‘settler colonialism’, which serves as a specific reference point for the book’s content – one where, historically, the character of intercultural encounters was often at its most conspicuous and unstable.
- ItemCapturing the Integration of Practice-based Learning With Beliefs, Values, and Attitudes Using Modified Concept Mapping(Libertas Academica, 2016) McNaughton, S; Barrow, M; Warwick, B; Frielick, SPractice-based learning integrates the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains and is influenced by students’ beliefs, values, and attitudes. Concept mapping has been shown to effectively demonstrate students’ changing concepts and knowledge structures. This article discusses how concept mapping was modified to capture students’ perceptions of the connections between the domains of thinking and knowing, emotions, behavior, attitudes, values, and beliefs and the specific experiences related to these, over a period of eight months of practice-based clinical learning. The findings demonstrate that while some limitations exist, modified concept mapping is a manageable way to gather rich data about students’ perceptions of their clinical practice experiences. These findings also highlight the strong integrating influence of beliefs and values on other areas of practice, suggesting that these need to be attended to as part of a student’s educational program.
- ItemClash of civilisations: Tonga and the West(Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Maori and Indigenous Development, Auckland University of Technology, 2014-06-27) Brown Pulu, TJThe House thanks God that the king is still in good health, and the Monarch is still in control of the affairs of the country. We thank god for the assistance to Tonga from donor countries (Lord Lasike cited in Matangi Tonga, 2011). At the first 2011 session of Tonga’s legislative assembly on June 9th the House was busy thanking god for king and aid donors, a variation to king and country, the usual saying. Tongan journalist Pesi Fonua poked fun at the country’s lawmakers by translating the parliamentary minutes into English for publication on his media website. The original Hansard transcript in the Tongan language might not have been altogether amusing, but rather, standard convention for formally addressing the monarch. However, one question that Fonua brought to light was at this time in Tonga’s history when a more democratic government was said to have taken the helm, had the hierarchal structure really changed? Furthermore, why had “donor countries” crept into the state’s salutations to the king, and which countries were Tongan politicians thinking of – Western ones or China? (Matangi Tonga, 2011). Personifying a Western-centred view of Tonga’s political system, New Zealand researcher of constitutional law Guy Powles made a brash commentary to Radio Australia. As a Palangi (white, European) observer, Powles presumptuously displayed his over-confidence in giving advice to Tonga. Claiming the Tongan “constitution does need to be studied in detail,” he felt certain “there are areas there of what one might call unfinished business.” Specifically, “the original principle hasn’t been carried through, that is the devolution of executive authority” (Powles cited in Garrett, 2014). Powles was pointing at executive powers the monarch held onto compared to the ones which were handed over to the prime minister and the national executive by constitutional amendment in 2010. Did reasonable expectation surface among the Tongan public that in the near future, all of the King’s executive authority would be delegated to the state? Or could this be read as an explicit case of the Western ego fantasising that all Pacific Island states naturally desired to remake their civilizations and sovereignty in their likeness? This essay pokes the polemics and pragmatics of Tongan civilization enacted in modern times through a distinct set of cultural values. How has the tenacity of Tongan civilization in today’s globalized world run into trouble with Western development partners – New Zealand, Australia, and America – especially when it comes to Tonga’s foreign relations? (International Business Publications, 2011).
- ItemClimate change blues: sustaining village life in Tonga(Te Ara Poutama, AUT University, 2013-12-17) Brown Pulu, TJThe loss of small island states will affect us all. Climate change refugees will become a very serious issue for all countries. Lord Ma’af On the afternoon of December 15th 2009, Tonga’s Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Lord Ma’afu, made a passionate plea to the international press assembled at the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. He had a message he wanted to get out to the world. Politically, Ma’afu awoke a subconscious fear developed countries stepped around not wanting to stir and be forced to deal with. Snared in the small island uncertainty of rising sea levels was the inevitability climate change refugees might need another place to live (Bedford and Bedford, 2010; Fagan, 2013). Where would they go? Who would take them in? What countries would help the Pacific Islands? Despite sociologists and political scientists documenting the failure of global governance to deliver a legally binding agreement for controlling climate change (Giddens, 2009; Held and Hervey, 2009; Fisher, 2004), alternatives put forward have not been taken up. What other methods for governing over bad weather are there? (Goldin, 2013). And how is village life in Tonga coping with climate blues?
- ItemConnecting Enaction and Indigenous Epistemologies in Technology-Enhanced Learning(Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Library, 2023-03-14) Smith, James; Aguayo, claudioWithin educational scholarship, and in particular technology-enhanced learning research, the ‘enactivist’ conception of cognition has been steadily gaining in prominence over the past few decades (Begg, 2002; Leonard, 2020). Enactivism can be defined as a philosophical proposition contending that cognition emerges by way of active interplay between an organism and its context. Enactive theory sees that organisms create experiences and understandings through their actions and are not passive receivers of input from an environment. They are ‘actors,’ such that what they experience is shaped by how they act (Varela et al., 1991). Enactivist understandings of learning see education as emergent processes in which ‘knowing’ for an organism stems from, and is embedded in, complex systems of relations between individuals and how they influence and are influenced by cultural contexts. These in turn are also influenced by, and influence environmental circumstances (Begg, 2002). Concerning educational technology (edtech), enactivist approaches have gained attention due to this cognitive position being based upon circular forms of influence, in which tools used, environments, social interactions and more, all contribute to cognition occurring (Author 2, 2021). Additionally, indigenous epistemologies and worldviews are also being looked to by many within edtech research, to define and conceptualise learning technology in more ecological, embodied, and co-relational ways (Hradsky, 2023; Meighan, 2022; Reedy, 2019). Indigenous worldviews offer more interconnected, ecological, and systems-oriented ways of viewing education and edtech, connecting to circular enactivist positions. Indigenous worldviews and enactivism relate in that both are interconnected and holistic viewpoints, which see less separation between individuals, other beings, environments, and ‘the world.’ This is important, as in a world full of ‘wicked’ socio-ecological problems, bridges need to be built between ecological and relational indigenous viewpoints, and traditional western science and philosophy (reductionist and rationalistic) (Authors, 2021). In this presentation, we posit that there are potential unexplored links between enactivist educational approaches which utilise technology (such as XR interventions. See: Author 2, 2020, Author 1, 2018; Author 1, 2021), and indigenous approaches and philosophies of technology enhanced learning (Authors, 2022). Such contemporary projects which contribute to this conversation include O-Tu-Kapua (Author 2, 2017), Kōrimurimu (Author 1, 2018) and Pipi’s World (Author 2, 2021; Author 2, 2019). In particular, Kōrimurimu (2018) fostered an educational ‘ecosystem’ in which students could engage and interact with the learning using a variety of different technologies, approaches, and through stimulation of different senses. Embodied and holistic methods were utilised to stimulate learning in not purely rationalistic/cognitive ways. These approaches tied both enactive and indigenous perspectives of knowing and building knowledge experientially and sensorially. Here we present some initial research and conceptual propositions around potential links between these theoretical areas and highlight some proposed methodological approaches to investigating and detailing these connections. Such links between enactivism and indigenous worldviews we have identified include circularity regarding learners to their tools/devices and environment, embodied views of cognition and learning, holistic and interconnected paradigms, and a shift away from Cartesian conceptualisations of separation between mind and body.
- ItemCraik’s The New Zealanders: A Formative Case of Meaning-Construction(Victoria University of Wellington Library, 2023-08-23) Moon, PaulFrom the 1820s, there was a surge in the number of books about New Zealand being published in Britain. George Craik’s The New Zealanders (1830) serves an exemplar of how many of these works – which tended to be more popular than academic – not only provided British readers with information about New Zealand and its indigenous people, but which also contributed to processes of meaning-construction that both reflected current trends in interpreting the non-European world, and to some extent anticipated new ways of understanding the indigenous other.
- ItemDisaster politics: cyclone politicking and electioneering in the Kingdom of Tonga(Te Ara Poutama, Auckland University of Technology, 2014-03-04) Brown Pulu, TJEntering the new year of 2014 the Kingdom of Tonga had enough to worry about; a local economy choking to near death and a finance minister sacked and replaced in a political spectacle leaving the public baffled over what went wrong between him and the Prime Minister (Fayle, 2014; Lopeti, 2014c; Fonua, 2014b). People uttered they looked forward to the end of year election tentatively set for Thursday November 27th. The 2010 register of around forty thousand voters had increased at the 2014 intake by four thousand, mostly voters who had turned the age of suffrage at twenty one years old. The chorus call from the masses was simple, vote them out. Then Cyclone Ian struck on Saturday 11 January 2014 aggravating Tonga’s money shortage. Journalist Pesi Fonua wrote “the impact on the Tongan economy of the cyclone and the salary rise for civil servants at this point of time is a matter of great concern” (Fonua, 2014a). He was right. The state and taxpayers could not afford economic recovery from Tonga’s cruellest cyclone, a symptom of climate change, let alone paying for a 5% rise in the cost of living allowance for public servants. As the national debt distress sore became inflamed the Public Service Association decided it was the right time to fight cabinet for a 22% living allowance rise because 5% was not enough (Lopeti, 2014a). This essay asks a pointed question. Leading up to the general election of November 2014, how was cyclone politicking being manoeuvred to sway the way people would vote?
- ItemDisaster Politics: Cyclone Politicking and Electioneering in the Kingdom of Tonga(Te Kaharoa: The e-Journal on Indigenous Pacific Issues, 2014-03-04) Brown Pulu, TJAbstract Entering the new year of 2014 the Kingdom of Tonga had enough to worry about; a local economy choking to near death and a finance minister sacked and replaced in a political spectacle leaving the public baffled over what went wrong between him and the Prime Minister (Fayle, 2014; Lopeti, 2014c; Fonua, 2014b). People uttered they looked forward to the end of year election tentatively set for Thursday November 27th. The 2010 register of around forty thousand voters had increased at the 2014 intake by four thousand, mostly voters who had turned the age of suffrage at twenty one years old. The chorus call from the masses was simple, vote them out. Then Cyclone Ian struck on Saturday 11 January 2014 aggravating Tonga’s money shortage. Journalist Pesi Fonua wrote “the impact on the Tongan economy of the cyclone and the salary rise for civil servants at this point of time is a matter of great concern” (Fonua, 2014a). He was right. The state and taxpayers could not afford economic recovery from Tonga’s cruellest cyclone, a symptom of climate change, let alone paying for a 5% rise in the cost of living allowance for public servants. As the national debt distress sore became inflamed the Public Service Association decided it was the right time to fight cabinet for a 22% living allowance rise because 5% was not enough (Lopeti, 2014a). This essay asks a pointed question. Leading up to the general election of November 2014, how was cyclone politicking being manoeuvred to sway the way people would vote?
- ItemEntangled Cognition in Immersive Learning Experience(SAGE Publications, 2023-06-26) Aguayo, Claudio; Videla-Reyes, Ronnie; Veloz, TomasImmersive learning environments in education provide a set of rich and diverse learning affordances (possibilities). Cognition in such environments can be considered as embodied, enacted, embedded, and extended (the 4Es of cognition). During such cognitive happenings, we assume and live as valid everything we experience. Yet in this enactive structural coupling between individuals and their experiential world, another phenomenon occurs. We become a behaviorally inseparable entity with the virtual/immersive world. We become entangled with that virtual/immersive world. Here we propose that, within the framework of the 4Es of cognition, a recognizable lived experience phenomena occurs when learners engage with virtual or immersive learning environments. That is, cognition becomes entangled in immersive environments with alternative realities. Coming from the Santiago school of cognition, and building from ideas from immersive learning, 4E cognition, and quantum entanglement inspired in quantum cognition, we attempt to describe the process of entangled cognition happening in immersive learning environments. We recognize at least two levels of entanglement from the same recursive phenomenology: one we call a local entanglement, related to perception and sense-making; and a second we call a global entanglement, connected to the process and phenomena of human consciousness and meaning-making, accessible when conceived as a whole. We see the benefits for such a theoretical framework to ultimately guide, justify, and encourage the emergence of an epistemology shift in educational technology towards design principles that account for entangled cognition in immersive learning (and beyond), and the associated possibilities offered by new immersive technologies in education.
- ItemEthical Enactivism for Smart and Inclusive STEAM Learning Design(Elsevier BV, 2023-08) Aguayo, Claudio; Videla, Ronnie; López-Cortés, Francisco; Rossel, Sebastián; Ibacache, CamiloCurrent global challenges of the 21st century promote STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education and digitalization as a means for humans to be the central actors in the construction of a sustainable society that favors a sense of worth and global wellbeing. In this scenario, new educational technology tools and immersive learning affordances (possibilities), offer unprecedented potential for the design of smart and dynamic learning systems and contexts that can enhance learning processes across varied audiences and educational settings. However, current STEAM education practice lacks attention to equipping all citizens with the necessary skills to use digital technologies in an ethical, critical and creative way. This gap calls for attention in design processes, principles and practices that are attentive to ethical considerations and values-based approaches. On the other hand, in its formulation STEAM as an educational approach is framed in four fundamental pillars: creativity, inclusion, citizenship and emerging technologies, which also put attention on the inclusion of disadvantaged and underrepresented social groups during STEAM education design. Following an apparent need to explore ethical and inclusive design in STEAM education, and inspired in the 4E cognition framework, ethical enactivism and embodied and ecosomaesthetics experience design, here we propose a theoretical framework grounded on systems thinking for the design of smart and dynamic STEAM learning systems and settings. The framework is aimed at STEAM educational psychologists, educational technologists, learning designers and educational practitioners who wish to address the global challenges of 21st century education by means of creative, innovative and inclusive education design.
- ItemFieldwork journals on Tonga's 2014 election: what's so funny about that?(Te Ara Poutama, AUT University, 2015) Brown Pulu, TThis essay presents selected passages from the fieldwork journals of Teena Brown Pulu and Richard Pamatatau on Tonga’s 2014 election. Staged on November 27th, here was the second general election under an amended constitution intended to bring about a more democratic system of parliament and government. Woven together are interrelated factors which field researchers like us – academics who craft their written studies on encounters, observations, and conversations gathered from a specific people and place – experience and live through in day-to-day work. Highlighted in this paper are our reflections and recollections as Richard, a journalism academic, and Teena, an anthropologist, researching in the field while fielding a political climate of ordinary folks’ frustration. By this, Tongan people saw the nineteenth century class-system instituted in the 1875 constitution was fixed to the modified political structure introduced in 2010. Therefore, the thread interlacing our journal excerpts to an analysis of what is taking hold in Tongan political life is satire and wit, and how humour is manoeuvred to criticise and critique power and authority.
- ItemForget China: no shark trade in Tonga - yeah right(Te Ara Poutama, Auckland University of Technology, 2013-12-17) Brown Pulu, TJIn the South Pacific winter of 2013, Michael Brassington reported from Tonga that “China is now the South Pacific’s most valued VIP.” The Australian journalist was interviewing Pesi Fonua, longstanding Tongan publisher who commented: “They are definitely calling the shots. Whatever they want they can negotiate or take it.” Referring to China, he ranked this regional power as a twenty first century precursor for South Seas debt, diplomacy, and indebtedness. By Fonua’s description China was the debt stress killer. In 2014, Tonga would start repaying Chinese soft loans worth 40% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) spent on buildings, wharfs, bridges, roads. Ordinary people in this small island developing state were worried the government might default on loan payments. Then what would happen? Would China own Tonga? What have Pakeha New Zealanders’ perceptions of Pacific Islanders got to do with any of this? Reconfiguring South Pacific relations with China as a contending power sparked off anxiety for the United States, Australian, and New Zealand governments. The question was how did political unease shape strategies to control the region? For Tonga’s national affliction of debt distress, did New Zealand’s regional engagement consider how an age old attitude towards Pacific Islanders weighed down this country’s excess baggage carried over from the 19th and 20th centuries, nudging them closer to China?
- ItemFree roast pig at open day: all you can eat will not attract South Auckland Pacific Islanders to university(Te Ara Poutama, Auckland University of Technology, 2014-11-03) Brown Pulu, TJI kid you not. This is a time in Pacific regional history where as a middle-aged Tongan woman with European, Maori, and Samoan ancestries who was born and raised in New Zealand, I teach students taking my undergraduate papers how not to go about making stereotypical assumptions. The students in my classes are mostly Maori and Pakeha (white, European) New Zealanders. They learn to interrogate typecasts produced by state policy, media, and academia classifying the suburbs of South Auckland as overcrowded with brown people, meaning Pacific Islanders; overburdened by non-communicable diseases, like obesity and diabetes; and overdone in dismal youth statistics for crime and high school drop-outs. And then some well-meaning but incredibly uninformed staff members at the university where I am a senior lecturer have a bright idea to give away portions of roast pig on a spit to Pacific Islanders at the South Auckland campus open day. Who asked the university to give us free roast pig? Who asked us if this is what we want from a university that was planted out South in 2010 to sell degrees to a South Auckland market predicted to grow to half a million people, largely young people, in the next two decades? (AUT University, 2014). Who makes decisions about what gets dished up to Pacific Islanders in South Auckland, compared to what their hopes might be for university education prospects? To rephrase Julie Landsman’s essay, how about “confronting the racism of low expectations” that frames and bounds Pacific Islanders in South Auckland when a New Zealand university of predominantly Palangi (white, European) lecturers and researchers on academic staff contemplate “closing achievement gaps?” (Landsman, 2004). Tackling “the soft bigotry of low expectations” set upon Pacific Islanders getting into and through the university system has prompted discussion around introducing two sets of ideas at Auckland University of Technology (The Patriot Post, 2014). First, a summer school foundation course for literacy and numeracy on the South campus, recruiting Pacific Islander school leavers wanting to go on to study Bachelor’s degrees. Previously, the University of Auckland had provided bridging paths designed for young Pacific peoples to step up to degree programmes (Anae et al, 2002). Second, the possibility of performing arts undergraduate papers recognising a diverse and youthful ethnoscape party to an Auckland context of theatre, drama, dance, music, Maori and Pacific cultural performance, storytelling, and slam poetry (Appadurai, 1996). Although this discussion is in its infancy and has not been feasibility scoped or formally initiated in the university system, it is a suggestion worth considering here. My inquiry is frank: Why conflate performance and South Auckland Pacific Islanders? Does this not lend to a clichéd mould that supposes young Pacific Islanders growing up in the ill-famed suburbs of the poor South are naturally gifted at singing, dancing, and performing theatrics? This is a characterisation fitted to inner-city Black American youth that has gone global and is wielded to tag, label, and brand urban Pacific Islanders of South Auckland. Therefore, how are the aspirational interests of this niche market reflected in the content and context of initiatives with South Auckland Pacific Islander communities in mind?
- ItemFrom STEM to STEAM: An Enactive and Ecological Continuum(Frontiers Media SA, ) Videla, R; Aguayo, C; Veloz, TSTEM and STEAM education promotes the integration between science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and the arts. The latter aims at favoring deep and collaborative learning on students, through curricular integration in K-12 science education. The enactive and ecological psychology approach to education puts attention on the role of the teacher, learning context and socio-cultural environment in shaping lived learning experiences. The approach describes education as a process of embodied cognitive assemblage of guided perception and action. The latter process depends on the interaction of learners with digital and/or analogue learning affordances existing within the socio-technological environment. This article proposes that the scope of an enactive-ecological approach can be extended to the domain of learning science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), especially when it comes to understanding deep roots of the learning process. We first present an exhaustive literature review regarding the foundations of both the enactive and the ecological learning theories, along with their differences and key similarities. We then describe the fundamentals and latest research advances of an integrated STEAM pedagogy, followed by the notion of mixed reality (XR) as an emerging educational technology approach, offering an understanding of its current foundations and general disposition on how to understand digital immersion from ecological psychology. Next, we propose a systems theoretical approach to integrate the enactive-ecological approach in STEAM pedagogy, framed in the Santiago school of cognition attending to the interactive dynamics occurring between learners and their interaction with learning affordances existing within their educational medium, establishing that sensorimotor contingencies and attentional anchors are important to restrict sensory variety and stabilize learning concepts. Finally, we consider two empirical studies, one from Chile and the other from New Zealand, in which we demonstrate how the enactive-ecological approach built upon a systems theory perspective can contribute to understanding the roots of STEAM learning and inform its learning design.
- ItemGeopolitical Storymaking about Tonga and Fiji: how media fooled people to believe Ma'afu wanted Lau(Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Maori and Indigenous Development, Auckland University of Technology, 2014-07-14) Brown Pulu, TJJust when Tongan Democratic Party leader ‘Akilisi Pohiva stumped the public by saying he admired Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama because “he has been able to make things happen and take development to the people,” the Government of Tonga’s Minister for Lands, Lord Ma’afu, came right out of the blue and trumped him (Tonga Daily News, 2014a, 2014b). Ma’afu topped Pohiva at causing public bamboozlement. By this, Pohiva was the progenitor of Tonga’s thirty year old pro-democracy movement. Why would he over romanticise about the former military commodore Frank Bainimarama, the hard-line originator of Fiji’s third coup to take place in a period of twenty eight years? Pohiva’s swinging politics from democracy in Tonga to an overthrow of democracy in Fiji baffled readers (Naidu, 2014; Graue, 2014). But Ma’afu took centre stage as the show stopper. Momentarily, people were gobsmacked and did not know what to make of him. Was Tonga’s Minister for Lands and Survey who was a senior noble in the Tu’ivakano cabinet courting mischief or dead serious? Fiji’s permanent secretary for foreign affairs Amena Yauvoli was certain, we “would just have to wait for the Tongan government’s proposal” (Tonga Daily News, 2014a). But as Tongan journalist Kalafi Moala put it, “they will be waiting for a very long time” on that geopolitical front (Moala, 2014). This essay explores the geopolitical storymaking about Tonga and Fiji instigated by Tonga Daily News publishing online that Lord Ma’afu had said, “In good faith I will propose to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Fiji that they can have Minerva Reef and we get Lau in return” (Tonga Daily News, 2014a). The very thought of drawing up a new map instantly ignited outrage from Fijian readers. How then, might Tonga and Fiji’s argument over ownership of the Minerva Reefs play out this time around? Could the region’s geopolitical atlas ever be imagined differently when its cartography was permanently cemented to the era of Western European colonial empire? When the media fooled people to believe Lord Ma’afu wanted the Lau Islands for the Minerva Reefs, what did this signal about how news sites can manoeuver shock advertising and manipulate what politicians say to up their ratings?
- ItemGreat-grandfather, Please Teach Me My Language(De Gruyter, 2017-09-26) Ka'Ai, TInspired by Joshua Fishman’s lifetime dedication to the revitalisation of minority languages, especially Yiddish, this paper presents my personal story of the loss of the Māori language in my family in New Zealand/Aotearoa and our attempts to reverse this decline over several generations. The paper includes a description of several policy reforms and events in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s history and the impact of colonisation on the Māori language, which, as seen in other colonised peoples around the world, has contributed to the decline of this indigenous language. The paper also presents the mobilisation of Māori families and communities, including my own family, to establish their own strategies and initiatives to arrest further language decline and to reverse language loss in Māori families in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article, combining story and history, should be read as a historiography of the Māori language, based on the author’s acknowledgement that other indigenous minority communities, globally, and their languages also have experienced the effects of colonisation and language loss. This article, much like a helix model, weaves together a narrative and history of Māori language loss, pain, resilience, and hope and seeks to establish that no language, because it contains the DNA of our cultural identity, should be allowed to die. A table of key landmarks of the history of the Māori language also is included.