Ngā manu ā Tāne—the stories of Māori doctoral students
Hine Funaki-Cole’s (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāi Tahu, Tonga) PhD study in Education explored the experiences of Māori PhD students at universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, learning more about how Māori students navigated the world of the university while at the same time moving through her own journey in the world of academia.
“Stories are the heart of the thesis as is whakapapa—our relatedness to everything in Te Ao Māori,” says Hine. “Through my story and through my thesis, I related to the primal parents Ranginui and Papatūānuku, to the phases of the world from the void, to darkness and potential, to glimmering light, to the world of light. Alongside this whakapapa, I refer to deities such as Papatūānuku, Hinepūtehue and others.”
“Doing this helped me make sense of a lot of the unseen, intangible kinds of happenings within our own stories, but also as a collective in higher education, and in a wider context of a settler-colonial Aotearoa.”
Hine describes her own PhD as beginning in Te Kore—the void, the nothingness. With the active mentoring her supervisor provided her from the very beginning, Hine started reading about how to write a PhD, and then reading about the work other researchers had done and themes that might apply to her own work.
“I struggled with some of the reading material because at that time, my critical thinking hadn’t ever dug that deep into structures and norms which I know are meant to be invisible,” Hine says. “I struggled to wrap my head around a lot of it, and I was often urged to go deeper.”
“For a long time, I truly believed I just wasn’t good at understanding theory. I’d put in all this work, but I wasn’t connecting with it—so it must be me.”
Hine says it wasn’t until she started reading work that related and spoke to the way she thinks and acts that she had a breakthrough in her journey.
“I could see connections between some of the big stuff like structures and systems working together with the way I understood Te Ao Māori and pūrākau. I could see connections between whakapapa and stories, and I started drawing it in a circle and seeing the links between kupu Māori and their meanings and relatedness.”
In the Māori creation story, first there was nothing (Te Kore). Next, there was Te Pō, the perpetual night, where no light exists but there are stirrings of being and change. Within Te Pō, Ranginui and Papatūānuku lay in a tight embrace until they were pushed apart by their son Tāne Mahuta. This allowed Te Ao Mārama (the world of light) to come into being, giving Tāne and his brothers room to move, explore and grow. Moving through Te Kore into Te Ao Mārama, Hine used the framing of this pūrākau to navigate her own PhD journey.
“I believe that in many ways throughout my studies, I entered Te Pō. Whenever I got stuck, I’d go there and feel everything and nothing at the same time. I was growing in that space even if I didn’t yet know it. I was coming to terms with things that were beyond my control but also within reach. I never couldn’t breathe, even if it felt challenging, and then I’d come back out again. I healed and I learned, and my intellectual thinking took leaps.”
Hine found these same themes of digging deep and overcoming in the stories of the other Māori PhD students she spoke with.
“Despite the challenges, we all have our own ways of coping, managing, and thriving. For some that was self-care, time off from studies, and for many, it was leaning on their pou—supporters.”
Hine’s thesis explores how Māori doctoral students construct their academic selves and establish a sense of belonging in their institutions. The data suggested Māori PhD students navigate those complex environments and carve out their own spaces. These included physical spaces, but also emotional and relationship spaces, and spaces beyond the physical realm.
“Māori PhD students navigate structural, systemic, theoretical, mental, and spiritual dimensions at any given moment. While gaining new knowledge during their PhD, they were also learning about and navigating their Māori identities.”
“They were pulled in many directions as they came to understand being scholars inside a settler-colonial institution, alongside healing from past traumas linked to language loss and whakamā.”
Some of the ways in which the students Hine spoke with navigated their PhD journeys and their space in universities included sourcing their own funding to have the financial support to make their own decisions, changing supervisors if they weren’t the best fit, reclaiming te reo Māori, privileging Māori and Indigenous scholarship, theories, and methodologies and finding pockets of support in the safe spaces they created. Just as Hine did, many of them rested in Te Pō and came out again. Although this could look like disconnection to some, Hine describes it as a survival and healing tactic to protect their mana. Finally, through their work these students carved out space for them and for others to come.
Hine emphasises that there have been several key people contribute to getting her through Te Ao Mārama to graduation. It has never been a lone journey. Her pou include her husband and children, closest friends, supervisors who have mentored her and recognised all the identities she brings including being a mother. But often, it was networking and coming together with other Māori and Indigenous students who sparked a light in the path whenever Hine was looking for a missing link in her thinking. Space that allow these relations to occur are vital in higher education, she says.
Hine is now moving on to further research in this area as a research fellow with Te Herenga Waka and joining a team funded by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga to expand the current understandings of the experiences, challenges, and opportunities experienced by Māori PhD graduates, in particular, their employment and life trajectories post-graduation. The project will address current shortages of highly qualified Māori experts in leadership roles in academia, iwi, government, and civil society.
When Hine first came to university in 2010, she had a dream of becoming a teacher and helping prevent Māori student attrition at high school.
“My dream isn’t that different now. I’m still looking into those ideas, but I’ve shifted the focus from the individual to understanding the ways in which the environment shapes Māori student belonging in predominantly white spaces and the movements we take from there. I am interested in the stories they tell because they are unique and diverse, but also form a collective with huge potential for threading chains of change.”