📖 Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Who Is She?

Dame Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou) is one of the most internationally influential scholars in Indigenous education and research methodology. Her 1999 book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples transformed the field of research ethics internationally, and remains one of the most-cited education and social science texts in the world.

As a Professor at the University of Waikato and former Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori, her career spans educational research, university leadership, and advocacy for Indigenous intellectual sovereignty — the right of Indigenous peoples to define, conduct, and own research about themselves.

Key Contributions

• Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) — The foundational text arguing that Western research frameworks have been tools of colonialism — extracting knowledge from Indigenous communities without consent or benefit. Now in its third edition and cited over 50,000 times.
• Kaupapa Māori Research — With Graham Smith, developed and codified Kaupapa Māori as a research approach: research by Māori, for Māori, grounded in Māori values and accountable to Māori communities.
• Twenty-Five Indigenous Research Projects — A typology of research approaches that serve Indigenous communities: decolonising, claiming, testimonies, storytelling, celebrating survival, remembering, and more.
• Indigenous Education Policy — Major contributor to Māori education policy in NZ, including Ka Hikitia and the development of Māori-medium education policy frameworks.

Decolonizing Methodologies — Core Argument

Smith's central claim is both simple and radical: the word "research" itself is probably the dirtiest word in the Indigenous world's vocabulary. Western research traditions — framed as objective, universal, and value-neutral — have in practice served colonialism by:

• Extracting Indigenous knowledge and repositioning it as Western intellectual property
• Defining Indigenous peoples as objects of study rather than knowledge-producers
• Applying Western frameworks to Indigenous realities in ways that produce systematic distortion
• Publishing findings that serve academic careers and institutions rather than the communities studied

The implication for schools: whose knowledge is in the curriculum? Whose knowledge has been systematically excluded? This is not abstract theory — it manifests in which authors are on reading lists, which historical events are taught, which scientific contributions are attributed.

Classroom Implications

• Audit your curriculum for whose knowledge counts. Who wrote the texts you teach? Whose history is centred? Which languages are represented as legitimate vehicles for knowledge?
• Position students as knowledge-producers. Research projects, community interviews, oral history collection — these honour the knowledge that students and their communities carry.
• Teach Smith directly in senior years. Year 11–13 students studying Social Studies, English, or History benefit enormously from engaging with Smith's critique of knowledge and power.
• Question assessment systems. Smith's work invites teachers to ask: does this assessment measure what I value, or does it measure conformity to particular cultural forms of expression?

Academic References & Further Reading

• Smith, L.T. (1999/2021). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (3rd ed.). Zed Books.  ·  Google Scholar ↗
• Smith, G.H., & Smith, L.T. (1996). New mythologies in Maori education. In P. Spoonley et al., Nga Patai. Dunmore Press.  ·  Google Scholar ↗
• Smith, L.T. (2005). On tricky ground: researching the native in the age of uncertainty. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research.  ·  Google Scholar ↗
• Chilisa, B. (2019). Indigenous Research Methodologies (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications. Related framework.  ·  Google Scholar ↗

Mātauranga Māori Lens

Professor Tuhiwai Smith's "Decolonizing Methodologies" is a foundational text of mātauranga Māori as a research framework. Her argument is not that indigenous knowledge should be included — it is that indigenous communities have the right to control research conducted about them, using their own epistemological frameworks and measures of community benefit. Her kaupapa Māori research principles — positionality, respect, reciprocity, community benefit — are direct expressions of tikanga applied to academic practice.

The concept of "research as ceremony" in her later work reclaims mātauranga Māori as a form of relating to knowledge that is relational, obligatory, and grounded in whakapapa rather than extractive. Her framework challenges teachers to ask: whose knowledge frameworks am I using to assess my students? Who benefits from the evidence I collect? Is my classroom a site of whanaungatanga or a site of extraction? Hauora — the holistic wellbeing of the learner — is protected or damaged by the epistemological choices teachers make daily.