title: Question-asking and question-exploring

authors: Sands, Lorraine May

subjects: agency

abstract: The Centre of Innovation Research at Greerton Early Childhood Centre was characterised as a dispositional milieu where working theories were explored through a narrative research methodology. As the research progressed, the teachers at Greerton strengthened the way we were listening to, and watching out for young children's questions to enable them to become deeply involved in exploring the world around them. The key question for this research was: How does a 'question-asking' and a 'question-exploring' culture support children to develop working theories to shape and re-shape knowledge for a purpose? Given our work with Te Whāriki (1996), we have always seen teaching and learning as being about reciprocal relationships with people, places and things and the context being crucial, and continuity as the intention of story. In this project, by combining narrative inquiry with action research in an early childhood centre in Aotearoa New Zealand, we have developed a frame of 'commitments' that go beyond those that might be for narrative inquiry on its own. Four aspects have been woven into the narrative inquiry: continuity as the 'linchpin' of our work, agency (issues of power), an innovative conceptualising of the connection with community, and the central role of affect or emotion in learning.

text: Question-asking and question-exploring The Centre of Innovation Research at Greerton Early Childhood Centre was characterised as a dispositional milieu where working theories were explored through a narrative research methodology. As the research progressed, the teachers at Greerton strengthened the way we were listening to, and watching out for young children's questions to enable them to become deeply involved in exploring the world around them. The key question for this research was: How does a 'question-asking' and a 'question-exploring' culture support children to develop working theories to shape and re-shape knowledge for a purpose? Given our work with Te Whāriki (1996), we have always seen teaching and learning as being about reciprocal relationships with people, places and things and the context being crucial, and continuity as the intention of story. In this project, by combining narrative inquiry with action research in an early childhood centre in Aotearoa New Zealand, we have developed a frame of 'commitments' that go beyond those that might be for narrative inquiry on its own. Four aspects have been woven into the narrative inquiry: continuity as the 'linchpin' of our work, agency (issues of power), an innovative conceptualising of the connection with community, and the central role of affect or emotion in learning.

year: 2012

title: Pest Fish Control - Fact Sheet

authors: Tempero, Grant Wayne

abstract: Due to their negative impacts on water quality and native biodiversity in New Zealand, regional councils have included a number of introduced freshwater fish species such as koi carp, rudd, brown bullhead catfish, goldfish, tench, gambusia (mosquitofish) and European perch (Figure 1) in their pest management plans. The Department of Conservation and regional councils undertake control and eradication programmes around New Zealand every year in order to contain their spread and reduce their impacts. Nearly all regions of mainland New Zealand have at least one of these species but they are most prevalent in the Auckland and Waikato regions. LERNZ has been researching the population ecology and capture methods of pest fish populations in order to develop efficient methods for their control.

text: Pest Fish Control - Fact Sheet Due to their negative impacts on water quality and native biodiversity in New Zealand, regional councils have included a number of introduced freshwater fish species such as koi carp, rudd, brown bullhead catfish, goldfish, tench, gambusia (mosquitofish) and European perch (Figure 1) in their pest management plans. The Department of Conservation and regional councils undertake control and eradication programmes around New Zealand every year in order to contain their spread and reduce their impacts. Nearly all regions of mainland New Zealand have at least one of these species but they are most prevalent in the Auckland and Waikato regions. LERNZ has been researching the population ecology and capture methods of pest fish populations in order to develop efficient methods for their control.

year: 2015

title: He whiringa aroha: A mokopuna and a pare in the peabody essex museum

authors: Murray, Moana

abstract: Taonga, Māori ancestral treasures, embody the mana and knowledge of Māori ancestors. He Whiringa Aroha is one such treasure: a carved pare that affirms the mana of wāhine in the colonial archives, but whose whakapapa has been obscured. This thesis uses the name ‘He Whiringa Aroha’ and the te reo Māori pronoun ‘ia’ to refer to ‘E5501’, which is located in the 1806 Richardson collection in the Peabody Essex Museum. As He Whiringa Aroha travelled from Aotearoa New Zealand to Massachusetts, United States, ia became entangled in historical narratives that disembodied the taonga from hapū and iwi Māori. Taonga were not only physically removed from Aotearoa, but taonga and Māori creative practices were named, gendered, and displayed by colonisers. American sailors collected and displayed He Whiringa Aroha as an exotic ‘curiosity’ to showcase their triumph over Pacific waters. Yet, He Whiringa Aroha is a power portal—a potent braid to the past, the future, and to those Māori ways of being that defy the limiting archival language of colonialism. How do we relate to taonga Māori that have been fragmented by the colonial archive? What are alternatives to restory and reclaim taonga that remain in overseas museums? 

Using a creative methodology grounded in Mana Wahine and pūrākau, this thesis weaves a whiri (braid) of aroha (reverence) that attempts to restore he hononga mokopuna–the connection between taonga and their descendants. Through poetry, a decolonial map, interviews with ringatoi (Māori creatives), and archival research, I explore how the histories of taonga can be reclaimed in Māori worldviews. Interviews with pūkenga and tohunga toi reveal Māori understandings of taonga as expressions of toi, defying western taxonomies of ‘art’ and ‘curio’. Furthermore, archival research into the East India Marine Society and Peabody Essex Museum unmasks the American sailors and their provenance practices that
have marginalised Māori, and in particular, wāhine Māori. Finally, I use pūrākau of atua wāhine, Mana Wahine and takatāpui scholarship to restory and rename He Whiringa Aroha. This archival storytelling raises new ethical questions about ownership and kaitiakitanga (guardianship), which pose interventions for existing conversations about the place of taonga Māori in overseas museum collections. Reclaiming the histories of ancestors in museums is more than decolonizing colonial archives; on the contrary, restorying taonga is an act of Indigenous resurgence. This Masters research opens new possibilities to reclaiming takatāpui narratives and the mana of wahine in museum archives.

text: He whiringa aroha: A mokopuna and a pare in the peabody essex museum Taonga, Māori ancestral treasures, embody the mana and knowledge of Māori ancestors. He Whiringa Aroha is one such treasure: a carved pare that affirms the mana of wāhine in the colonial archives, but whose whakapapa has been obscured. This thesis uses the name ‘He Whiringa Aroha’ and the te reo Māori pronoun ‘ia’ to refer to ‘E5501’, which is located in the 1806 Richardson collection in the Peabody Essex Museum. As He Whiringa Aroha travelled from Aotearoa New Zealand to Massachusetts, United States, ia became entangled in historical narratives that disembodied the taonga from hapū and iwi Māori. Taonga were not only physically removed from Aotearoa, but taonga and Māori creative practices were named, gendered, and displayed by colonisers. American sailors collected and displayed He Whiringa Aroha as an exotic ‘curiosity’ to showcase their triumph over Pacific waters. Yet, He Whiringa Aroha is a power portal—a potent braid to the past, the future, and to those Māori ways of being that defy the limiting archival language of colonialism. How do we relate to taonga Māori that have been fragmented by the colonial archive? What are alternatives to restory and reclaim taonga that remain in overseas museums? 

Using a creative methodology grounded in Mana Wahine and pūrākau, this thesis weaves a whiri (braid) of aroha (reverence) that attempts to restore he hononga mokopuna–the connection between taonga and their descendants. Through poetry, a decolonial map, interviews with ringatoi (Māori creatives), and archival research, I explore how the histories of taonga can be reclaimed in Māori worldviews. Interviews with pūkenga and tohunga toi reveal Māori understandings of taonga as expressions of toi, defying western taxonomies of ‘art’ and ‘curio’. Furthermore, archival research into the East India Marine Society and Peabody Essex Museum unmasks the American sailors and their provenance practices that
have marginalised Māori, and in particular, wāhine Māori. Finally, I use pūrākau of atua wāhine, Mana Wahine and takatāpui scholarship to restory and rename He Whiringa Aroha. This archival storytelling raises new ethical questions about ownership and kaitiakitanga (guardianship), which pose interventions for existing conversations about the place of taonga Māori in overseas museum collections. Reclaiming the histories of ancestors in museums is more than decolonizing colonial archives; on the contrary, restorying taonga is an act of Indigenous resurgence. This Masters research opens new possibilities to reclaiming takatāpui narratives and the mana of wahine in museum archives.

year: 2024