This commentary proposes that the decision to hold findings from te ao Māori and biomedicine in productive tension—rather than resolving them into a single integrated account—is not a methodological preference but a constitutional obligation grounded in the te reo text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Drawing on the ontological turn in research methodology and on recent Waitangi Tribunal findings, the commentary argues that the two texts of the Treaty/Tiriti constitute two different worlds of reality: the English-language version enacting a hierarchical transfer of sovereignty; the te reo text enacting complementary, coequal spheres of kāwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga.

Sir Hirini Moko Mead’s Five Tests framework helps identify a te ao Māori response to contemporary challenges. One such issue that Mead confronted, more than two decades ago, was genetic modification. We applied Mead’s precedent test to a genetic technology under development in Aotearoa New Zealand called single-sex offspring selection (SSOS). Single-sex offspring selection aims to control rat populations that harm native species either by producing primarily male litters or, by rendering females infertile, through a gene drive.

This research investigated how mātauranga Māori through a pūrākau could be used to increase a tauiwi teacher’s confidence and practice within a tuakana–teina learning relationship. Mātauranga Māori relates to the interwoven connections between humans and the world that inform tikanga. Relationship with the local hapū and their tikanga of partnership and whakamana provided a framework of whanaungatanga, through which ako occurred between the hapū and the tuakana–teina.

Whakataukī are metaphors that provide us with ethical guidelines, and tikanga and kawa are the wisdom, knowledge and history handed down from the past to future generations to help people navigate their lives and support aspirations for today and the future. Using a twin-hulled waka ama as a metaphor for the relationship between participants and researchers in Indigenous research, this article explores Māori and Indigenous ethics as having equal status to Western research ethics. In relation to research, ethics can be a complicated domain when working alongside Māori and Indigenous peoples.

To address the freshwater crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand, regional councils must give effect to a relatively new term, Te Mana o te Wai, which is based on a very old word: “mana”. While local understandings are emerging, questions remain among Māori about what Te Mana o te Wai means. This conceptual article reviews the literatures to discuss and define Te Mana o te Wai. Four types of mana emerge from the scholarship: mana comes from the atua; mana is a spiritual power; mana is a generative power, and mana is the authority to control. There is also a fifth aspect: mana is a power that can be taken. The answer to the question of what Te Mana o te Wai means lies in the old words.

In this article, four taiohi Māori of Te Tai Tokerau provide critical insights into their experiences of racism and their perspectives of school, teaching and education systems in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants in this project all positively identified as Māori but have very different ways of conceptualising that identity. Western schooling in Aotearoa has, since its introduction, been a site of cultural contestation. Schools are also highly visible locations where Indigenous and Western epistemological differences play out with real-life impacts and consequences.

The kākāpō, a nocturnal parrot native to Aotearoa New Zealand, embodies resilience and rarity. Once found across the country, this taonga species is now critically endangered, threatened by habitat loss and predators, and requiring major conservation efforts. This article is an attempt to retrieve mātauranga Māori about the kākāpō by exploring its role in cosmology, material culture and oral traditions. Our search of the literature, mōteatea and waiata archives, and museums resulted in very few references of central interest to this study. Most references concerned the kākāpō’s decline and conservation.

The article adopts a novel pūkenga-based approach to develop a narrative of extreme weather events informed by Indigenous knowledge. Three key findings, identified from co-learning amongst Indigenous researchers and pūkenga, are seen as required to formally (re)generate knowledges-in-place. First, an understanding of causal factors reveals the collapse of local knowledge narratives and the need to renew these.

Traditional knowledges are not homogeneous or tidy; they often contain hidden meanings and tensions. In some cases, they are contradictory and therefore understanding them requires careful analytical and critical thought. The marginalisation and exclusion of Indigenous knowledges in contemporary contexts has perhaps been (falsely) justified because they do not easily translate into non-Indigenous ways of knowing. The purpose of this article is to critically examine traditional Māori knowledge and epistemology in relation to modern challenges and meaning-making. Indigenous conceptual frameworks allow for Indigenous interpretation of our experiences on our own terms.

The beauty of te ao Māori is the pragmatic fluidity of many of our concepts. Generally employed to explain our genealogical links and connections to land, whakapapa can also be applied within the context of rangahau to organise, structure, analyse and understand information, experiences and relationships. This article introduces Te Waka Pounamu, a whakapapa-based framework developed as a methodological research model for my doctoral studies. Included in the whakapapa framework is a tikanga Māori model I have named Te Tuamaka.