Ethnographic Edge (E-Journal)
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Indigenous autoethnographic reflections on the development of indigenous practice in the Master of Applied Indigenous Knowledge programme at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in Māngere
Full text linkThis study explores the transformative experiences of five students in the Master of Applied Indigenous Knowledge programme at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Employing an Indigenous autoethnographic approach, this paper delves into the students' personal and professional growth, each from different backgrounds and professions. The research highlights integrating Indigenous knowledge into various professional contexts, emphasising cultural identity, personal growth, community engagement, and resilience. The programme, blending academic rigour with indigenous insights, underscores how education can empower individuals to contribute to their communities. The narratives of these students, reflecting their journey through cultural reclamation and professional development, contribute significantly to understanding Indigenous knowledge systems and their application in contemporary settings
Environmental Ethnography: What do you mean, ethnography’s not just about humans?
No full textEnvironmental ethnography is discussed here from involvement with a local government authority in Aotearoa New Zealand focused on soil, water and land management. Climate change and environmental degradation are making such local government work more difficult and expensive. As costs trend upwards and new rules are applied, community challenges to local authorities increase. Environmental ethnography identifies constraints on the organisational ability to meet infrastructural needs to produce environmental solutions locally. Some constraints are internal (organisational), some are local (community beliefs and attitudes), but the most significant constraints are external to local agencies. In ethnographic terms, working with local and national environmental authorities is a process of learning from staff, scientists, and administrators. Māori and Pākehā communities’ efforts to manage their local destinies provide insights into pressures on local government organisations. Landowners’ expectations and politicised discourses of climate denial or deferral also constrain day-to-day local authority work. Three intersections of local authority organisations' actions and local communities’ responses emerge from reflecting on this ethnographic learning, each shaping what local authorities can achieve. First, the social is not another set of insights; rather, the social is in the science. Second, in Aotearoa New Zealand the familiar nature-society binary is usefully disturbed by mātauranga Māori understandings of people and the environment. Third, changing modern productivist attitudes towards the environment is more than local—it is national and global—yet people’s responses are also intensely local. Environmental ethnography helps illuminate such tensions that create organisational and community dilemmas for local government authorities
Tō mātou haerenga: the journey of a fractured-connected Taiamai whānau: Reflections from a hapū wānanga
Full text linkFor some whānau Māori, colonisation has resulted in the disconnection from their home marae, whenua, hapū and iwi. This paper takes a collective authoethnograhical approach to describing and exploring a recent journey of reconnection and discovery embarked on by one whānau. The journey is framed by the construction of a waka hourua, a double hulled canoe, to represent the two parts of the hapū; those who retained their home base connection and those who were disconnected through generations of colonisation, racism and geographical distance
Worlding Sanctuary: Multispecies design ethnography on a farm animal sanctuary in Aotearoa
Full text linkFarm animal sanctuaries represent shared life-worlds between the human and nonhuman animal inhabitants. With a focus on the co-creation of sanctuary spaces and practices as acts of worlding and world-building, this paper presents a case study of the challenges and opportunities that arise when combining ethnography and creative practice. Beginning with a cultural analysis of farm sanctuary memoirs, I situate my local project within global narratives. Then, I describe my short-term ethnographic fieldwork experience and its relation to my creative practice. The final section of this article outlines the beginning of my shift from ethnographic inquiry into speculative narrative and provides an example of my creative work. Comparing and contrasting this with the anthropological literature on animal sanctuaries, I argue that a purposeful entanglement of multispecies ethnography and speculative narrative offers a unique way not just to understand multispecies relations but also to imagine new life-worlds
Traversing The Doctorate: Which Little Piggy Are You?
Full text linkTraversing the doctorate from start to completion can be stressful, with some students never reaching completion. This autoethnographic study explored how one researcher completed a Doctor of Philosophy and maintained their subjective wellbeing through ‘self-introspection’, using the analogy of the three little pigs. Data was generated through autoethnographic accounts. A four-step iterative process frames data analysis. There were four key findings. Self-talk with internal dialogue was a strategy used to move thinking to a more optimistic state of mind. Relational connectivity was effective in deliberately shifting negative affect states. Organisational skills enabled dealing with cognitive complexity. The use of a Researcher Journal guided self-regulation and self-control in self-reflection, contributing to the positive maintenance of one researcher’s subjective wellbeing. This autoethnographic account highlights ways of working that could be beneficial to help other researchers balance their subjective wellbeing while successfully completing the doctoral journey
Allyship or coalition? : Creating lived experience roles in academia, and why we are not quite there yet
Full text linkAllyship is regarded as an important role in the academic setting to support the inclusion of people with Lived Experience (LE) of mental health and addiction challenges. Understanding the context within which the allies in academia work requires further scrutiny to ensure power sharing. Mental health academics have created a body of published literature on LE in academia, presenting both the successes and barriers to authentic allyship. This narrative provides a dialogue between a person in an LE role in a university setting and a nursing academic regarding their experiences of allyship. These reflections present the potential challenges the LE role and their academic ally can face in establishing and sustaining these roles. The structures within the university setting that impact on the success or not of the role of ally are also considered. This narrative further contributes to the contested role of allies and offers a closer analysis of allyship and the power dynamics in play. We conclude by offering the notion of coalition as an alternative to allyship and an alternative approach to the success of the LE roles in academic institutions
Blurring the lines – a novice approach to riding on water
Full text linkThrough ethnographic inquiry of the author’s novice experiences of riding on water, the study dismisses using the preformed category of surfing and proposes the novice approach to fieldwork, instead. The article discusses the lines, or categorical thoughts, that researchers draw separating the body from the sea, or surroundings from experiences. Through the discussion of Georges Bataille’s famous water in water and related literature, the author argues how the lines can be blurred. The article further explores the methodological possibility to deepen future academic inquiries by examining so called non-Western thoughts and perspectives
The Eke Tangaroa programme for Māori/Pasifika early career academics: Past, present, future
Full text linkThis commentary reflects on Auckland University of Technology’s Eke Tangaroa programme, which aims to increase the number of Māori and Pasifika academic staff of the university and to support them in developing their research careers. The commentary has three parts, representing the past, present and possible future of the programme. The first part (past) is by the two senior professors who came up with the idea in the first place. The second part (present) is by the inaugural and current kaiurungi (navigator) of the programme, also the first author of this commentary. The third part (future) draws on a conversation with the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, who is responsible for the programme
Te Pepe Ao Uri Whāriki: The Development of Pūrākau Analysis Framework
Full text linkWairaka was the daughter of the rangatira Toroa, who captained the Mātaatua waka navigating across the Pacific Ocean to Aotearoa, New Zealand. When the Mātaatua waka arrived on the shores of Whakatāne, the men disembarked, but when Wairaka saw that the waka was in danger of drifting out to sea, ignoring the tapu forbidding women from handling the waka. She decisively acted to save the waka, calling out, “Kia Whakatāne au i ahau – I will act the part of a man” to draw on the strength of a man. In doing so, she heroically saved the Mātaatua waka and all those aboard. Indigenous peoples have long preserved their historical accounts using a variety of oral traditions. For Māori, the sharing of pūrākau is one-way oral records have been retained, shared and used to teach or inspire. “He kairangahau waahine, he whaangai ma matou kia kiia he uri nga Wairaka. We have adopted this group of female researchers in order that they emulate our ancestress Wairaka”.These words were included in a letter of support from kaumātua to conduct our rangahau of the te kōti rangatahi o Mātaatua. While we were honoured to be embraced, we were equally mindful of our responsibility to emulate Wairaka. From the outset, our research has been influenced by powerful pūrākau like that of Wairaka. In this article, we outline how we have drawn on personal, iwi, hapū and whānau participant pūrākau together with our observations to analyse and re-present pūrākau as a self-reflection and reflexivity analysis tool in developing a framework