Nau mai ❤ Tēnā tātou i runga i ngā ahuatanga o te wā,

The Tīpuna Project is a Māori (Indigenous) and Pākehā (White settler) collaborative project focused on researching with tīpuna/ancestors. ‘Tīpuna’ is a broad term to evoke human ancestors past, present and future as well as the more-than-human – including whenua, maunga, awa, moana and marae. Advancing the nature of tīpuna as co-researchers, we are drawing on the wisdom within both Te Ao Māori and European paganism to co-create inspirited tactics that allow us to experiment with an explicitly ancestral methodology. 

As a ‘participatory action research’ (PAR) project, we are also committed to local and global struggles for transformative change. Whether intergenerational healing for Indigenous peoples, accountability for White settler peoples or something else unforeseeable, we hope through the processes and outputs of our methodology to ultimately contribute to anticolonial and Indigenist movements in (ex) British settler colonies as well as the metropole. 

Members of The Tīpuna Project will be hosting quarterly zoom sessions (aka ‘zui’) for students in Aotearoa and the UK who (like us!) are keen to learn about inspirited transformative change through the beautiful messiness of PARand decolonising methodologies. Taking guidance from liberation pedagogies, we will reflect on where the project is at, answer any pātai and otherwise think/feel/imagine with everyone about the realities of this kind of work. The 2-hr, participatory space will alternate between mornings and evenings to accommodate time – and life – differences.

If you are interested or just curious in joining, email us with your connection to the kaupapa and any questions, and we’ll send you through the deets. We hope to have our first zui to meet each other by the end of the calendar year.

Ngā manaakitanga!

Teah (Te Whānau-a-Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Tainui-Waikato; t.a.carlson@massey.ac.nz) &

Rachel (Ngāti Pākehā – Aerana, Kotirana, Ingarangi, Hemane; r.liebert@uel.ac.uk)