Māori scholars to learn from Native Americans

Māori scholars awarded to learn from Native American counterparts

Two leading Māori scholars have been selected for Fulbright exchanges to the United States of America in 2011, where they will enrich their existing research by learning from Native American peoples about their experiences in that country.

Dr Leonie Pihama (Te Atiawa, Ngā Māhanga a Tairi, Ngāti Māhanga) from Auckland is the inaugural recipient of the Fulbright-Nga Pae o te Māramatanga Senior Scholar Award presented by Fulbright New Zealand and Nga Pae o te Māramatanga – New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence. Dr Pihama is Director of her own independent research company, Māori And Indigenous Analysis(MAIA) Ltd. She will spend five months at the University of Washington in Seattle researching impacts of historical and intergenerational trauma on the health and wellbeing of colonised indigenous peoples. While in Seattle she will work alongside Native American scholars including Dr Karina Walters, Director of the University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, who herself visited New Zealand as a Fulbright Scholar in 2008.

Another Māori researcher, Dr Chellie Spiller (Ngāti Kahungungu) from AUT University, has been selected for one of five 2011 Fulbright New Zealand Senior Scholar Awards. She will spend four months at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts expanding upon her doctoral research into how Māori businesses work to create spiritual, cultural, social, environmental and economic well-being. She intends comparing successful Native American businesses to Māori examples in a book documenting case studies of indigenous business models which go beyond the limited dimensions of financial profit-making to deliver wealth not just in material terms, but as defined in the original meaning of the old English word “welth” – to be well.

ENDS

Fulbright New Zealand was established in 1948 to promote mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchanges between New Zealand and the United States of America. The Fulbright programme offers a range of prestigious awards for New Zealand and American graduate students, academics, artists and professionals to study, research and teach in each other’s countries. Fulbright New Zealand offers over 70 exchange awards each year – half to students and half to scholars – and more than 1,400 New Zealanders and 1,100 Americans have benefited from a Fulbright award to date. The programme is mainly funded by the US and New Zealand governments with additional funding from award sponsors, private philanthropists and alumni donors.
See www.fulbright.org.nz for details about Fulbright awards and how to apply, or download a Media Fact Sheet of further background information here: www.fulbright.org.nz/about/mediafactsheet.pdf

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