Māori and Pacific wahine projects get funding boost

Projects that investigate exceptional wahine Māori in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland) throughout Māori history, and contemporary Pacific girl gamers have won $1,219,000 in Marsden grant funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Professor Melinda Webber (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whakaue) from Te Puna Wananga, within the University’s Faculty of Education and Social Work, has received a standard grant of $859,000 for her project, ‘Me aro ki te hā o Hineahuone: Pay heed to the dignity and power of women’.

She says the project will celebrate the rich whakapapa of wāhine (women) from Te Tai Tokerau by bringing to light previously unpublished stories of their significant contribution to the region, and Aotearoa more broadly.

“Little is known about the rich histories of these wāhine because early colonists preferred instead to record and amplify the stories of tāne (men).

This absence of their perspective doesn’t mean that wāhine were silent, but instead reflects how the practices and priorities of historical research have diminished female histories.”

She says kōrero tuku iho (ancestral knowledge) refutes the dominant view that traditional Māori society attached greater significance to the roles of tāne rather than wāhine.

“In this project, we plan to rectify this erasure by collecting, analysing and disseminating stories about wahine in Te Tai Tokerau as a taonga tuku iho (ancestral gift) for future generations.

“We will identify the distinctive acts of leadership, attributes, and often-lost whakapapa narratives of these wāhine and focus on what this can teach us about leadership in contemporary times.”

Alongside Professor Webber, the team includes Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori Associate Professor Te Kawehau Hoskins, Dr Maia Hetaraka, director of the Te Tai Tokerau Campus, and Māori Studies doctoral candidate Kapua O’Connor.

Professor Webber says she’s delighted to get this project off the ground.

“I’m excited for the opportunity to work alongside Te Kawehau, Maia, Kapua and our community experts in mātauranga-tuku-iho to surface the stories of our exceptional female ancestors.”

Dr Jean M Uasike Allen (born in Aotearoa, of Tongan and European heritage), a lecturer in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, has won a fast-start grant of $360,000 for her project, ‘Virtual Voyagers: Amplifying Pacific Girl Gamer voices.’

Her research will focus on Pacific girl gamers to understand more about how online gaming contributes to their wellbeing and relationships. She says that traditionally, gaming is a space that is male-dominated, sexist and hostile.

“And while some research focuses on girl gamer experience, we don’t know anything about the diversity of girl gamers at the intersections of ethnicity.”

However, a lot of what we do know is negative, she says.

“But if online gaming is such a hostile environment, why do girl gamers continue to engage in these spaces?”

A recent Aotearoa New Zealand study of 1923 people found that 79 percent are gamers, with 48 percent being girl gamers.

“We’re interested to know what they get out of their gaming interactions and how online gaming in general contributes to wellbeing, identity and relationships for Pacific girl gamers between 16 and 24 in Aotearoa New Zealand."

She is thrilled to get this project funded and hopes the findings will provide original insights, and be of interest globally in the fields of online gaming, Pacific gendered practices, wellbeing, identity and the idea of vā (relationships between people and things, unspoken expectations and obligations) in online spaces.