Kawegapūrongo | News and Events

How do birds navigate vast oceans, correcting themselves when blown off-course? The inner compass possessed by some animals is an enigma that has absorbed Professor Michael Walker, Joint Director Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, for many years.

Like all research centres, Ngä Pae o te Märamatanga pursues research excellence through academic communities. But our brief also extends outwards – aiming to also benefit many other communities as widely as possible. In doing this, the Knowledge Exchange programme is a unique feature of the Centre, and an essential part of achieving social transformation.

A few sleepless nights may well have been all to the good for Sarah-Jane Paine. She successfully completed her doctorate in 2006 on key factors affecting sleep and how they might be affected by ethnicity and socio-economic factors – and in the process became one of 500 new Mäori PhDs last year.

In a paper published in the international Journal of Biological Rhythms, Sarah-Jane, who isfrom Tühoe iwi, saw a prevalence of both “morning people” and ”night owls” in New Zealand.

For more then a generation scientists have known that life proliferates more rapidly near the equator. The problem was that up until recently, no one knew why this was so. And in 2006 when Dr Shane Wright solved the riddle in a Ngä Pae o te Märamatanga research project, the scientific world applauded.

Now largely surrounded by downtown Napier, Te Whanganui-a-Orotü (the Ahuriri Estuary), has seen decades of agricultural, industrial, and urban activity that have transformed this once pristine cultural and food resource into a sink for environmental contaminants. Pushing the lagoon floor up two metres, the region’s 1931 earthquake only added to reclamation and pollution of food stocks.

Long lead times from research to curriculum materials are hardly a new frustration. But with materials sometimes lagging discovery by 20 years for Mäori-medium teachers the delay is acute. They face challenges in low rates of te reo Mäori literacy growth, and have few resources in non-language subjects or in materials reflecting a Mäori world view.

PhDs are the backbone of any research community. Yet for the first hundred years or so of universities in New Zealand the number of Mäori doctorates could have been counted on not too many hands. This might make the target Ngä Pae o te Märamatanga set in 2002 of contributing to 500 new Mäori PhDs in five years only look the more unrealistic.

Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga is pleased to announce the release of the Request for Proposal for its Pae Tawhiti Grants. Two Grants will run in parallel and the areas of study are Te Reo Māori and Māori Economic Development and will commence in the middle of 2010.