Abstract:
This thesis is framed within the anti-colonial discourse of ‘writing back’. It foregrounds the multiple layers and simultaneous levels through which Maori interests in education are being contested, re-imagined and reformulated. These include peeling back the layers of western imperialism and its localised expressions. Three sites in which such struggles have occurred are analysed from this perspective. These are; (i) educational research, (ii) Maori social relations and, (iii) official school discourses on Maori. It is argued, that although these sites may appear to be vastly different from each other, they are informed by the same underlying structures and intersected by similar tendencies and movements. Such intersections have shaped the conditions within which Maori have attempted to recentre and re-prioritise strategically around notions of Kaupapa Maori and Tino Rangatiratanga. How this occurs is explored through a series of smaller studies, some conceptual and some empirical, which are situated within each of the four sections of the thesis.
Note: Nga aho o te kakahu matauranga is translated as ‘the threads of the cloak of knowledge’. It draws upon the metaphor of a woven cloak, where the warp and weft threads are interwoven to produce different colour and textual combinations. Some threads remain hidden from view, some threads white plain and ordinary carry the design, some threads look brilliant when in combination with others.
