Abstract:
As a small, isolated island nation, Aotearoa New Zealand has had limited productive power, but has primarily been an importer of international technology, knowledge, and expertise, mainly from European and North American knowledge sources (Nikora, 2014; Nikora, Levy, Masters-Awatere & Waitoki in Allwood & Berry, 2006). Local textbooks, library collections, teaching, and research methods have been predominantly modelled on these pooled sources, allowing for the easy movement of students, teachers, and researchers between countries and fields of practice (Nikora et al., 2017). European and North American psychologies have undeniably experienced notoriety or ‘success’ through its international propagation. However, WEIRD psychology offers only a single cultural lens through which one can view the social world and too often does so through denying and assimilating other cultural perspectives. When dominated by one way of knowing, the consequences may well be imperialism, racism, cultural violence, and the further denigration of Indigenous peoples (Walia, 2013; Watkins & Shulman, 2008). This realisation has fuelled many movements to indigenise psychology in different parts of the world, including those in Aotearoa New Zealand.