Assimilation and Difference: A Māori Story

Abstract

My unusual background as one of very few Māori-speaking teachers of senior school science drew me to both philosophy of education and autoethnographic methodologies. My research builds on my history of involvement since 1993 with teaching, developing, and researching the Māori science curriculum, when writing about my own teaching of science through the medium of te reo (the Māori language) was the only source of “empirical” information available. I became interested in other Māori-Pākehā gaps in understanding, and more general scenarios. In this chapter, I am interested in the workings of “assimilation” not only as a policy concept but also how it affects the way of life of Māori people today. To write this chapter, I blend narrative and analytical genres, using the tools of story and philosophical analysis, within a larger concept of writing as a Māori method of inquiry, to explore how assimilation works in relation to Māori thinking and identity.