Support for indigenous students must be relevant and specific to the community from which the students hail. It may therefore be a decolonizing experience. At Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi (TWWoA) a necessary but exciting opportunity has arrived to address the pedagogies used in student support to determine whether they are traditional, colonized or a hybrid of both. In this paper, Monte Aranga offers insight into the traditional Māori forms of vigilance and care which serve as precedents for contemporary learning situations; Carl Mika considers the effects that dominant Western practices of literacy have on the Māori body and thus on the spiritual facet of being Māori; and Susan Mlcek discusses the symbolic and pragmatic engagement of deliberate acts of teaching.  It is argued that indigenous institutions must always be challenging commonly held notions of knowledge, learning and teaching so that culturally appropriate pedagogies of student support continue to emerge.