1 · Governance is not one shape
Authority can be distributed through relationships, obligations, whakapapa, and hapū consent. A nation-state is one form of governance, not the definition of governance.
Two routes, decolonised Aotearoa history
This is the Source-First Inquiry route
Five lessons where the method is the point: provenance before content, the two Tiriti texts quoted verbatim, one statute read against its own power, framing words tested against the record, and the Crown's language of redress weighed against the land evidence. It stops in 1996 by design. Choose it for historical method. If you want the full arc through to the settlement era and Ihumātao, take the survey route.
Other teaching approach: Resistance & Agency Survey →He Pātai Tīmatanga | The Opening Question
This inquiry begins before Crown government and refuses a common shortcut: treating a centralised European state as the only form of governance. Ākonga examine how whānau, hapū, rangatira, whakapapa, and collective decision-making appear in different sources, then decide what those sources can and cannot prove.
Each lesson is complete as a stand-alone 90-minute source lab. Lesson 1 builds the method on pre-Crown governance and He Whakaputanga; Lesson 2 applies it to the two texts of te Tiriti, quoted verbatim; Lesson 3 follows the enforcement question into the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the Waitangi Tribunal’s 1996 findings; Lesson 4 meets the answer resistance gave — Parihaka, the ploughmen, and the Tribunal’s verdict on the invasion; Lesson 5 tests the Crown’s three promises of redress — ‘Reconstruction’, ‘Reform’, ‘Reparation’ — against what the land record actually shows. Together they are the methodological foundation for the study still to come: twentieth-century activism, representation, and redress.
Three ideas ākonga carry forward
2 · Sources arrive with a position
Creator, date, purpose, audience, and later editorial framing all shape what a source reveals. Provenance comes before quotation.
3 · Scope is part of truth
A source may support a claim about one hui, one confederation, or one rohe. Strong historians say how far their evidence reaches.
Pedagogical approach | Te Huarahi Ako
Counter-frame before counter-story
Ākonga identify the hidden definition inside a claim such as “no settled government” before replacing it. This keeps critique tied to language and evidence.
Triangulation, not source collecting
One source supplies evidence, another supplies context, and a third complicates scope. Students must explain how the sources work together.
Mana-enhancing hard history
The lesson names colonial exclusion without reducing Māori history to harm. Hapū authority and Māori political thought are the starting condition.
Available learning pathway
He Wā o Mua: Who Governed Before the Crown?
Ākonga test an “ungoverned land” frame against Te Ara’s account of tribal organisation and evidence from He Whakaputanga. They annotate provenance, triangulate claims, rewrite a misleading frame, and finish with a scoped evidence paragraph.
Ngā Tuhinga e Rua: One Signing, Two Texts?
Ākonga compare the te reo Māori and English texts of te Tiriti article by article — quoted verbatim from the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 — then read the Act’s own preamble conceding that the texts differ. Word-level evidence, a provenance twist, and a claim that stops where the words stop.
Te Raupatu ā-Ture: Which Text Got Enforced?
Ākonga read the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 the way historians do — the preamble’s justification story against the operative sections’ power, quoted verbatim from the Waitangi Tribunal’s 1996 Taranaki Report, which also supplies the verdict: a lawfully made Act, unlawfully applied. The lesson answers the question Lesson 2 raised.
Te Pāhuatanga o Parihaka: Resistance Without Arms
“The weapon was the tool of peace – the ploughshare.” Ākonga read Te Whiti o Rongomai’s recorded words, the Tribunal’s narrative of the ploughmen, the fencers and the 1881 invasion, and its 1996 verdict — then aim the evidence at the unit’s counter-narrative essay, whose exemplar topic this is.
Te Whakahoki Whenua: Was the Land Returned?
The Crown said it would fix Taranaki three times, and each time it used an official word: ‘Reconstruction’, ‘Reform’, ‘Reparation’. Ākonga test those three words against the Tribunal’s record — the 15-year wait for land returned, the 1912 acreages, the 1927 commission, the 1996 verdict — and decide, with a scoped and honest claim, how far each promise reached.
🎯 Curriculum Links | Te Hononga ki te Marautanga
Social Sciences · Phase 3 · active statement 21165 · verbatim
Exclusion of most Māori men from the political system and voting due to the property-based franchise and Māori communal landholding practices. Traditional leadership structures based on mana and whakapapa were not incorporated into colonial governance frameworks, contributing to differing understandings and reduced representation.
See the curriculum companion and where this statement is taught →
📋 Kaiako Planning Snapshot
Ngā Whāinga Ako | Learning Intentions
- Distinguish governance from a single centralised model of government.
- Analyse how provenance and framing shape a historical source.
- Construct a scoped claim about Māori authority using evidence from at least two sources.
Paearu Angitu | Success Criteria
- I can identify who created a source, when, for whom, and why that matters.
- I can separate evidence in a source from a later historian’s interpretation.
- I can make a claim that names its evidence and its limits.
Prep
Print one He Wā o Mua Source Lab per ākonga. Read the two linked official sources and decide whether your class needs local mana whenua context before the lesson.
🧠 Entry, on-level, and extension
- Entry: use the provenance sentence frames and complete one two-source claim with a partner.
- On-level: complete the full source lab and write an individual evidence-and-limit paragraph.
- Extension: compare a centralised-state definition of government with a distributed-authority definition, then explain which better fits the evidence and why.
🪶 Inclusion guidance and cultural safety
Do not ask Māori ākonga to authenticate a source or speak for their iwi. Do not universalise Ngāpuhi evidence from He Whakaputanga to all iwi. Make space for local knowledge only through relationships and agreed authority. The lesson critiques historical framing; it does not stage a debate over whether Māori authority existed.
Pedagogical Foundations | Ngā Tūāpou Akoranga
Decolonised history at Year 9‑10 does not replace the historical record — it expands it by including the perspectives, sources, and analytical frameworks that colonial historiography suppressed. Three researchers explain the theoretical foundation for this reorientation.
Decolonising Research
Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Source-supported: Smith’s decolonising methodologies interrogate colonial research and knowledge practices, and foreground Indigenous knowledge, voice and authority in how research is framed and who it serves. Te Kete Ako inference: in this unit, that means provenance and source selection are made visible to ākonga, and the colonial archive is not treated as the only legitimate historical record. Oral testimony, whakapapa and rangatira letters in te reo Māori are read alongside conventional archival evidence, each with its own provenance limits stated. The historiographical judgement about what that combination establishes is ours, not a position attributed to Smith.
Critical Pedagogy
Paulo Freire
Source-supported: Freire’s banking model describes education that treats learners as recipients into whom knowledge is deposited; his problem-posing alternative asks learners to investigate and make meaning for themselves. The critique is of education broadly, not of history teaching specifically. Te Kete Ako inference: in this unit, that means ākonga are given competing texts and evidence and asked to construct a claim and state its limits, rather than memorise one settled narrative. Treating history as an ongoing argument over evidence is our pedagogical position, applied to Freire’s frame.
Kaupapa Māori
Graham Smith
Source-supported: Smith’s Kaupapa Māori framework foregrounds Māori self-determination, cultural knowledge as taonga tuku iho, ako Māori, whānau, and a collective educational purpose. Te Kete Ako inference: in this unit, that means the sequence begins from Māori authority and agency — Lesson 1 asks who governed before the Crown — and keeps iwi and source specificity rather than making Māori history a supplement to a Pākehā chronology. The judgement that this ordering produces better history is ours; Smith’s sources establish the kaupapa, not that particular historiographical conclusion.
→ Explore all theorists at Te Whare Ako — Teaching Theory
Wāhi Ako | Choose Your Version
This version
Source-First Inquiry
Starts from "Who governed before the Crown?" — examines He Whakaputanga, historical provenance, and what evidence demands from us. Theorist scaffolds (Tuhiwai Smith, Freire, Graham Smith) included.
Start Lesson 1 →
Also available
Resistance & Agency
Broad survey — Māori perspectives, resistance, raupatu, Parihaka, and land return. Includes achievement criteria (Ngā Paearu Angitū). 5 lessons, Years 9–10.
Start Lesson 1 →