Project purpose: This research project aims to promote and deepen New Zealand’s understanding of Māori and their culture by ensuring that the stories and voices of Māori affected by the Canterbury earthquakes are heard, respected, valued and incorporated into relevant learning and planning environments. We know that the scale of damage from the recent and ongoing earthquakes centred in and around Otautahi have challenged all networks in the city at a time when many individuals and communities were already under severe economic pressure.

Project purpose: Hapai Te Hauora Tapui Ltd was set up in 1996 with a specific focus on Māori Public Health. The shareholder organisations are: Te Runanga o Ngāti Whatua, Raukura Hauora O Tainui and Waipareira Trust. Hapai provides public health leadership and advice to each of these providers and subcontract health promotion services back to these organisations through their own health providers; Te Ha o Te Oranga, Raukura Hauora o Tainui and Wai Health. Hapai’s core function is to provide strategic and policy public health advice and in relation to providing strategic advice on public health issues that directly impact on the health outcome for Māori.

Project purpose: Parents of young children, as the intimate stewards of a new generation, carry the weight of societal expectation upon their often youthful shoulders. While it is true that parenthood has probably never been more scrutinised by communities, institutions and the state at large, leaving almost all parents feeling pressured, it is also the case that certain groups, especially young parents endure greater suspicion, censure and surveillance than any other. Within this cohort, Māori parents and fathers in particular are criticised and often demonised in everyday discourse, in the media, policy frameworks, political power plays and institutional debates.

Project purpose: Mate Māori - Kōrero Kaumātua is a project within Te Puawaitanga o Ngā Tapuwai Kia Ora Tonu - Life and Living in Advanced Age: a Cohort Study in New Zealand (The LILAC Study NZ). The purpose of Mate Māori - Kōrero Kaumātua is to document the knowledge of Mate Māori held by the oldest old Māori (aged 80-90 years). The term mate is used for both sickness and death, with the context and the tense (the past tense indicates death and the present tense sickness). Te Rangi Hiroa distinguishes between sickness due to accidents – mate aitu; and mate atua – sickness due to malignant spirits.

PhDs are the backbone of any research community. Yet for the first hundred years or so of universities in New Zealand the number of Māori doctorates could have been counted on not too many hands. This might make the target Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga set in 2002 of contributing to 500 new Māori PhDs in five years only look the more unrealistic. But it is a welcome measure of change, and of a lot of hard work, that Emeritus Professor Leslie R Tumoana Williams, the Centre’s Capability Building Manager, says that target is well on the way to being achieved.

Project Purpose: The Ōkahu Bay Restoration Project is being undertaken by Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei and is an all-encompassing restoration project. Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei are working with The University of Auckland, Auckland City and NIWA. The first phase is determining baseline and historical conditions of Ōkahu Bay and compiling the information into a GIS database. Phase One will comprise many strands including hui to determine mātauranga and scientific analysis of kaimoana (biodiversity, population, spatial parameter), water quality, sediment testing. Ultimately we plan to undertake a Mauri Model Analysis in order to create a roadmap for restoration.

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 Māori PhDs last year. In a paper published in the international Journal of Biological Rhythms, Sarah-Jane, who is from Tūhoe iwi, saw a prevalence of both “morning people” and ”night owls” in New Zealand.

The teaching and development of a vibrant, dynamic, highly educated and sustainable Māori workforce operatingat the highest levels of tribal and government leadership and civic society, is crucial to driving positive economic, social and environmental transformation in Aotearoa. Current and future generations of Māori PhD students and graduates, Māori scholars and researchers, are needed to undertake excellent and transformative research, run research organisations and be change makers within their communities and New Zealand society more broadly.

Project purpose: To facilitate the publication of map layers that students 2009-11 have contributed to the TKAM Atlas, and secondly to organise and analyse student feedback data related to their Atlas work, for publication in a journal article. http://www.victoria.ac.nz/Māori/research/atlas/default.aspx