Māori Studies research achievements
Our world-leading Indigenous research leads to service and initiatives that benefit many people, as well as recognition and acclaim.
Within our communities
- Professor Tracey McIntosh is a member of two government-appointed review panels: the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and the Safe and Effective Justice Programme Advisory Group — Te Uepū Hāpai i te Ora. She is also a Primary Investigator on a major MBIE-funded project on family-violence prevention.
- Professor Margaret Mutu (Ngāti Kahu) and kaumatua Hone Sadler (Ngāpuhi) have been instrumental in researching and leading claims before the Waitangi Tribunal, for their respective iwi. As part of this work, Margaret Mutu co-wrote Ngāti Kahu: Portrait of a Sovereign Nation: Traditions, History and Treaty Claims (2017, Huia). Hone Sadler wrote Ko Tautoro Te Pito o Tōko Ao (2014, Auckland University Press) which weaves together karakia and whakapapa, histories and kōrero that are part of Ngāpuhi’s oral traditions.
- Professor Margaret Mutu and Dr Tiopira McDowell have been conducting Marsden-funded research about Māori experiences and analyses of the treaty claims settlement process. Preliminary results, which indicate many serious and widespread problems with the current process, were delivered to National Iwi Chairs Forum in December 2017 who advised the new Labour government of the urgent need to work with Māori to reach a mutually agreeable policy and process for settling treaty claims.
- Dame Anne Salmond is patron, chairperson or board member for numerous historic and conservation organisations, including the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Group, Te Awaroa: 1000 Rivers foundation, the Longbush Ecological Trust, and the Advisory Group for World Heritage Nomination, of Taputapuatea Marae in Ra’iatea, Society Islands
- We write books for non-academic audiences, such as Māori and Social Issues (2011, Huia, edited by Tracey McIntosh).
Within academia
- Māori Studies researchers have been instrumental in making the University of Auckland Te Whare Wānanga o Tāmaki Makaurau into Aotearoa New Zealand's highest-ranked university for Māori Knowledge and Development (PBRF).
- The Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi
Our researchers have won a number of the nation's most prestigious research accolades from the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi. - Professor Tracey McIntosh was co-holder of the Te Rangi Hiroa medal for Social Sciences (2017-2019) for advancing our understanding of enduring social injustices that undermine Māori wellbeing and inhibit social cohesion and meaningful cultural diversity in Aotearoa.
- Professor Margaret Mutu was made a Royal Society Fellow in 2017, and won the Pou Aronui Award in 2015 for her sustained contribution to Indigenous rights and scholarship in New Zealand, tangibly enhancing the cultural and economic wellbeing of her people.
- Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond won the Royal Society's highest award, the Rutherford Medal, in 2013 for her eminent work on Māori social structures and interactions with the European world, and on European exploration and engagement in the Pacific. Dame Anne was also named New Zealander of the Year in 2013 for her work in building bridges between cultures and mapping the country's history.
National book awards
- In 2009, Professor Linda Waimarie Nikora and her fellow authors Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Mohi Rua and Rolinda Karapu won the Book of the Decade Award at the inaugural Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards for Mau Moko: The World of Māori Tattoo. Their book also won the lifestyle and contemporary culture section of the New Zealand Book Awards 2008.
- Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond has twice won the overall non-fiction prize at the New Zealand Book Awards: in 1992 for Two Worlds: First Meetings Between Māori and Europeans, 1642–1772 and in 2004 for The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas.