Visiting lecture from Dr Elana Curtis...

It was so refreshing to take my class to a seminar by visiting lecturer Dr Elana Curtis from the Faculty of Medicine from my first alumni uni of Auckland University. She is currently a senior lecturer and leader/director for a programme and course of study that supports Maori and Pasifika students into the school of Medicine.

I think what was so encouraging for me was that she talked about issues for indigenous peoples and especially Maori, within mainstream education, that we used to only think about and talk about in personal conversations back in the 1980s and 90s and were not able to address openly.

Now with leaders such as Dr Graham and Dr Linda Smith forging ahead with Kaupapa Maori research, they have set the tone within research that allowed Maori and other indigenous peoples in NZ (and overseas) to discuss the issues that have been so damaging and damning by Western researchers.

I became well aware of this in naively thinking that I could become a researcher after I'd return back to uni after teaching 2 years in South Auckland, it was in the "field" that I learned that a lot of indigenous communities had suffered from the affects of Western researchers and actually "hated" researchers, particularly in Otara, with a vengeance. It was there that I decided against that career path.

So listening to her was neat to know that the classes that we are running at Te Wananga o Aotearoa, in Indigenous Research is working alongside the ideas that Dr Elana Curtis discussed. It is about racism and inequities, it's also about privileging and colonisation as well as what we need to consider as indigenous researchers in our positioning.

Looking forward to more encouraging stories to share...