Research? Rangahau? Tofa sa'ili?...

 When I left Auckland University in the late 1990s, having been a graduate of the Arts Facility in two of many departments i.e. Geography, English, Anthropology, History and Art History (and the gym - ha ha), I learnt a lot about research and wanted to become a researcher, however, that all changed when I started my career in education in the "real world" and found out that indigenous peoples in various communities hated "researchers".

Those experiences totally changed my views on research and I vowed not to become a researcher but to do other things that would support our communities. You see, I thought that research was supposed to help communities but then to find out "in the field" that in most cases, research and researchers were quite harmful, it made me re-think what I wanted to do in the field of research.

A couple of years ago I was asked to take on the position of teaching the indigenous research course and I grabbed it with both arms and enjoyed teaching it for two years until it was revamped into the new course that I am currently teaching.

What I learnt from that year long course was some very important principles when engaging in the field of research. In fact, in the current indigenous (academic) tertiary circles that I walk in the preference is to use terms such as "Rangahau" which is to weave one's journey or to gather information from the four winds with related obligations, connections, reciprocity and world views of the indigenous peoples.

I'm currently considering to write some of my thoughts ready for a presentation at a symposium towards the end of the year at our Wananga I'm looking at what some of the marked differences are between research as opposed to rangahau and tofa sa'ili, the latter being a Samoan concept for deeper information gathering. One of the common themes being to write about things that enhance the indigenous communities' worldviews rather than deficit perspectives.

Looking forward to engaging with 'research' in a new way that enhances the understandings of indigenous perspectives...