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This research provides insight into current te reo Māori (the Indigenous language of Aotearoa, New Zealand) use in English-medium ECE settings. We videoed naturalistic conversations between kaiako (educators) and tamariki (aged 15–28 months) at 24 English-medium BestStart ECE centres. Te reo Māori was quantitatively assessed across five routines: kai (food) time, book time, group time, free play, and nappy change. The highest rates of te reo Māori use per minute were observed during the kai time, book time, and group time routines, respectively, and lowest during free play and nappy change. Although scripted/prepared te reo Māori use (e.g. karakia and waiata; prayer and song) were well used, opportunities for more complex and elaborate te reo Māori use remain. This research provides insight into the current use of te reo Māori in English-medium ECE settings, an enhanced understanding of kaiako contributions to te reo Māori revitalisation goals, and applications for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizers of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup event made explicit their aim to "be and do better" regarding the inclusion and representation of Indigenous peoples. This was particularly important because in seeking to jointly secure the right to host the event, both Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia made much of including and showcasing Indigenous cultures in their respective countries. Subsequently, organizers incorporated Indigenous flags, language, and rituals throughout the event. FIFA appointed cultural advisors to enhance cultural understanding among teams. However, the Spanish national team, "La Roja," sparked controversy by posting a video mocking the haka, "Ka Mate," a cultural treasure to Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. This led to public outcry, calls for apology, and efforts to reconcile relations. In this commentary, we explore this incident, critiquing FIFA and the current state of event management regarding the inclusion of Indigeneity and engagement with Indigenous Peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bicultural nation that is Aotearoa New Zealand is now a multi-ethnic society, home to many non-indigenous ethnic minority communities. This study explored the perceptions and experiences of four self-identifying non-indigenous ethnic minority psychotherapists living in this country. Specifically, it answers the question: "What are the predominant themes that can be identified in the accounts of non-Māori ethnic minority psychotherapists, residing and practicing within the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand?" Semi-structured interviews with participants explored their lived everyday experiences in both personal and professional spheres. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and yielded three themes: (1) "Acculturation to mainstream" captures the personal challenges participants encountered as immigrants in relocating and adapting to mainstream Aotearoa New Zealand culture; (2) "Encountering Indigenous culture" describes participants' experiences of coming into contact with indigenous Māori culture, and ensuing perceptions and understandings; (3) "Relating to biculturalism" describes how the participants understand and make meaning of biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Understanding these participants' experiences can help non-indigenous ethnic minority psychotherapists become better informed and politically aware, and may empower them to negotiate a more meaningful position in a bicultural nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health intervention implementation in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), as in many countries globally, usually varies by ethnicity. Māori (the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa) and Pacific peoples are less likely to receive interventions than other ethnic groups, despite experiencing persistent health inequities. This study aimed to develop an equity-focused implementation framework, appropriate for the Aotearoa NZ context, to support the planning and delivery of equitable implementation pathways for health interventions, with the intention of achieving equitable outcomes for Māori, as well as people originating from the Pacific Islands. Methods: A scoping review of the literature to identify existing equity-focused implementation theories, models and frameworks was undertaken. One of these, the Equity-based framework for Implementation Research (EquIR), was selected for adaptation. The adaptation process was undertaken in collaboration with the project's Māori and consumer advisory groups and informed by the expertise of local health equity researchers and stakeholders, as well as the international implementation science literature. Results: The adapted framework's foundation is the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the written agreement between Māori rangatira (chiefs) and the British Crown), and its focus is whānau (extended family)-centred implementation that meets the health and wellbeing aspirations, priorities and needs of whānau. The implementation pathway comprises four main steps: implementation planning, pathway design, monitoring, and outcomes and evaluation, all with an equity focus. The pathway is underpinned by the core constructs of equitable implementation in Aotearoa NZ: collaborative design, anti-racism, Māori and priority population expertise, cultural safety and values-based. Additionally, the contextual factors impacting implementation, i.e. the social, economic, commercial and political determinants of health, are included. Conclusions: The framework presented in this study is the first equity-focused process-type implementation framework to be adapted for the Aotearoa NZ context. This framework is intended to support and facilitate equity-focused implementation research and health intervention implementation by mainstream health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In settler-colonial countries like Aotearoa New Zealand, television programmes about rurality are fundamentally entwined with the nation's colonial history, but how this context impacts on locally made, public service television content and production is seldom examined. Utilising data collected from interviews with programme makers and a novel bi-cultural friendship pair methodology, we examine how a high-rating mainstream programme, Country Calendar, conceptualises and delivers stories about Indigenous Māori and consider the extent to which these stories represent a decolonising of television narratives about rurality. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating Indigenous voices and values, the impact of structural limitations and staffing constraints on public service television's decolonising aspirations, and challenges reconciling settler-colonialism with the show's well-established 'rosy glow'. While rural media are often overlooked by communication scholars, our study demonstrates the contributions they might make to the larger task of decolonising storytelling about national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has led to urgent calls for environmental action and justice, which is likely to include increased urban vegetation. The benefits of this planting could go beyond ecological and climate benefits to contribute to decolonisation and environmental and spatial justice and build on the well-documented links between ecological and human wellbeing. In Aotearoa New Zealand, past and ongoing injustices resulting from colonisation have disconnected Māori (the Indigenous people) from their land. Māori see themselves reflected in the landscape and te taiao (the natural world). The process of colonisation has mostly erased natural heritage, intrinsic to Māori identity, from urban areas. Many plants in urban areas represent colonial identity rather than this natural heritage, and many of the native plants that have been planted originate from other parts of the country. Through reviewing the literature, this article argues for research that determines the benefits of urban planting design prioritising plants that naturally occurred in the past, termed here ‘plants of place’, in public places. In settler colonial countries, where it is an accepted practice to acknowledge built and predominantly colonial heritage, making pre-colonial natural heritage visible can have many co-benefits. It has the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, decolonisation efforts, spatial justice and environmental justice. Celebrating natural heritage and planting ‘plants of place’ can contribute in some part to righting past injustices and preparing for a changing future.

The removal of a baby at birth is a significant intervention in family life. Avoiding removal requires attention to all levels of the family social ecology. Utilising a collective case study approach, and a critical realist epistemology, this project explores the experiences of three women who have avoided removal, and their community-based workers. Key themes are the necessity of intensive, ecological and relational service provision; and the mediation role of the community-based worker between women and the statutory child protection service. Services that were 'by Māori for Māori' were reported as most likely to maintain these fragile relationships. Effective services were holistic and intensive, drew on parent's own motivation of care for children, and focussed on stress reduction and creating 'friend-like' relationships. The mediation role of community workers reflected their instrumental position, and included mediating risk perceptions between the statutory agency and women. In the instance of disability, mediation included direct, collective advocacy to challenge risk perceptions utilising children's rights concepts and a social model of disability. The implications for policy and practice are: to improve equitable access to intensive services based on an ecological theory of change and with an emphasis on relational practice; improve provision of by Māori, for Māori services; and require services to take a rights-based approach to both mothers with disabilities and their children. It also highlights the important role of community-based workers to advocate, support change and improve coordination between families and the statutory child protection system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has led to urgent calls for environmental action and justice, which is likely to include increased urban vegetation. The benefits of this planting could go beyond ecological and climate benefits to contribute to decolonisation and environmental and spatial justice and build on the well-documented links between ecological and human wellbeing. In Aotearoa New Zealand, past and ongoing injustices resulting from colonisation have disconnected Māori (the Indigenous people) from their land. Māori see themselves reflected in the landscape and te taiao (the natural world). The process of colonisation has mostly erased natural heritage, intrinsic to Māori identity, from urban areas. Many plants in urban areas represent colonial identity rather than this natural heritage, and many of the native plants that have been planted originate from other parts of the country. Through reviewing the literature, this article argues for research that determines the benefits of urban planting design prioritising plants that naturally occurred in the past, termed here 'plants of place', in public places. In settler colonial countries, where it is an accepted practice to acknowledge built and predominantly colonial heritage, making pre-colonial natural heritage visible can have many co-benefits. It has the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, decolonisation efforts, spatial justice and environmental justice. Celebrating natural heritage and planting 'plants of place' can contribute in some part to righting past injustices and preparing for a changing future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were inclusive in their design, the reliance on official measurement infrastructures has upheld narrow definitions of both the terms of sustainability and development. Indigenous and non-Indigenous "governance beyond the state" approaches call these definitions into question. They highlight that disaggregated official data are unable to fully reflect alternative grounds and aspirations of living sustainably with the environment and non-human world. Relational Indigenous epistemologies and practices contribute to alternative epistemic infrastructures. In this paper, three examples from the Andean-Pacific region provide an alternative lens through which to reconceptualize and remake the SDG landscape. Together this suite of cases highlights the importance of bottom-up articulation processes, knowledge inclusion, and alternative epistemic harmonization for operationalizing the SDGs. In particular, we highlight the urgent need to renegotiate the relationship between Indigenous communities and the global measurement infrastructure in order to pursue and realize sustainability globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viruses are important constituents of ecosystems, with the capacity to alter host phenotype and performance. However, virus discovery cued by disease symptoms overlooks latent or beneficial viruses, which are best detected using targeted virus detection or discovered by non-targeted methods, e.g., high-throughput sequencing (HTS). To date, in 64 publications, 701 viruses have been described associated with indigenous species of Aotearoa New Zealand. Viruses were identified in indigenous birds (189 viruses), bats (13 viruses), starfish (4 viruses), insects (280 viruses), and plants (126 viruses). HTS gave rise to a 21.9-fold increase in virus discovery rate over the targeted methods, and 72.7-fold over symptom-based methods. The average number of viruses reported per publication has also increased proportionally over time. The use of HTS has driven the described national virome recently by 549 new-to-science viruses; all are indigenous. This report represents the first catalogue of viruses associated with indigenous species of a country. We provide evidence that the application of HTS to samples of Aotearoa New Zealand's unique fauna and flora has driven indigenous virus discovery, a key step in the process to understand the role of viruses in the biological diversity and ecology of the land, sea, and air environments of a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on personal teaching experiences, this article turns a spotlight on the potentials, pitfalls and peculiarities of engaging with Indigenous literature from Aotearoa (New Zealand) in a contemporary German tertiary education context. It directs attention to the entanglement of individual teaching endeavours and classroom constellations with the national university landscape, as well as to the necessity of considering such teaching in a global context. The underlying ambition of the described teaching approach is to provide a local and cultural focus that allows for nuanced insights, while also acknowledging comprehensive interweavings and a plurality of voices. Arguing for a reflective, inquiring, and plurifying pedagogy that consciously emphasizes ambiguities and frictions, I conclude that, while complexities can only ever be adumbrated and exemplarily discussed in any university course, it is essential to emphasize the multifacetedness and concurrently local as well as global embeddedness of Māori literature, its authors and its readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural risk perspective conceptualizes the causes of inequities in child protection system contact as unequal exposure to the structural causes of child abuse risk, combined with biases in the responses of child welfare workers and reporters. This conceptual article proposes a third mechanism of inequity: instrumental biases. It is proposed that instrumental biases operate as a third group of mechanisms that inequitably increase the involvement of some groups and not others. Instrumental biases operate through institutional structures, interpretive concepts and risk proxies that affect how risk is coded and becomes attached to particular people. Against the background of the notify-investigate model that creates poor conditions for decision making, and shapes institutional structures, instrumental biases include the miscalibration of the demand and supply of services (an institutional cause); family-specific surveillance bias and a reliance on prior case histories (a risk proxy cause); widening legal definitions of serious harm (an interpretive concept cause); and complex responses to intimate partner violence that minimize theories of IPV and the social context it occurs within (concept and risk proxy causes). It is argued that within the decision-making context of the child protection system, how services are structured and risk becomes codified has disproportionate impacts on some communities compared to others. Examples from Aotearoa New Zealand, with reference to Māori and people living in high-deprivation areas, are used to illustrate these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent research shows a gradual increase of young Māori in Higher Education it remains the case that inequality amongst the Indigenous population remains entrenched and institutionalised. This article explains how national governments in Aotearoa New Zealand have failed to address the colonial disparities and inequalities in the Higher Education system. In this process we will show, through the lens of historical privilege and institutional racism, how these processes continue to shape and frame both opportunities and experiences for Māori youth. The article will also highlight what strategies are needed if a more inclusive Higher Education system is to be developed that addresses the disparities that young Māori encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores European (Pākehā) settlers' perceptions of smells and why certain smells were labelled as threatening and transgressive, whereas others were deemed desirable and health-inducing. Whether it was the stench of dried fish, the musky odours of wetlands or the scent of flowers, representations of smell pervade the writings of Pākehā in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this paper, we draw attention to the critical role smells played in Pākehā settlers' perceptions of and efforts to radically remake terrestrial and freshwater systems of the Waipā and Waikato Rivers (located in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Smells, scents, and aromas were all-powerful aides connected to Pākehā settlers' understandings of health and disease. They influenced individual settlers and settler colonial government actions to remake landscapes and waterscapes. Nevertheless, smellscapes are largely overlooked by scholars when discussing environmental change and management regimes. • Smells informed how people experience environments, foods, biota, and other people. • Colonial New Zealand comprised of landscapes, waterscapes, and smellscapes. • Gender norms and race-based thinking influenced settler colonial smellscapes. • Settler colonial project in New Zealand involved to remake deodourise wetlands. • Indigenous Māori occupied ambiguous positioning settler colonial smellscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural risk perspective conceptualizes the causes of inequities in child protection system contact as unequal exposure to the structural causes of child abuse risk, combined with biases in the responses of child welfare workers and reporters. This conceptual article proposes a third mechanism of inequity: instrumental biases. It is proposed that instrumental biases operate as a third group of mechanisms that inequitably increase the involvement of some groups and not others. Instrumental biases operate through institutional structures, interpretive concepts and risk proxies that affect how risk is coded and becomes attached to particular people. Against the background of the notify-investigate model that creates poor conditions for decision making, and shapes institutional structures, instrumental biases include the miscalibration of the demand and supply of services (an institutional cause); family-specific surveillance bias and a reliance on prior case histories (a risk proxy cause); widening legal definitions of serious harm (an interpretive concept cause); and complex responses to intimate partner violence that minimize theories of IPV and the social context it occurs within (concept and risk proxy causes). It is argued that within the decision-making context of the child protection system, how services are structured and risk becomes codified has disproportionate impacts on some communities compared to others. Examples from Aotearoa New Zealand, with reference to Māori and people living in high-deprivation areas, are used to illustrate these concepts.

The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act (1989) heralded family group conferences as an innovative mechanism to reinforce the role of family in child welfare decision making. While many have regarded family group conferences as a culturally appropriate response, others have argued that continued managerialism reflects a guise of cultural responsiveness that has actively disempowered whānau (wider whānau) and the young person in decision-making processes. Similar to concerns that led to the formation of the 1989 Act, institutional racism inspired Rangitāne o Wairarapa (Rangitāne) to reclaim the family group conference process and child welfare decision making as an Iwi (tribal) function. The current study reports on the development of a family group conference practice model of one Iwi (Rangitāne) as a case study of cultural reclamation. The success of the approach is juxtaposed against the Iwi practice model, critical success factors, and opportunities for the development of such practice models across Aotearoa New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social work education sector has a vital role to play in advancing the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples. Global and national standards reinforce this requirement and regulatory frameworks identify decolonising practices as important to the delivery of social work education. While standards influence and guide practices, the degree to which decolonising practices are operationalised at the local level depends upon programme delivery within higher education. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with social work education leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand to explore how decolonising practices were demonstrated within their programmes. The research found that all programmes were committed to a decolonising approach but struggled in different ways to operationalise this commitment and to maintain momentum. Having Mãori staff was seen as essential but there were too few, and meeting regulatory qualification requirements was problematic. Integrating Mãori knowledge and practices within the curriculum was also vital for student learning and building their cultural responsiveness. Non-Mãori staff had a particular responsibility to acknowledge the harmful effects of colonisation and to practise respectful partnership with Mãori. The role of leaders and staff in the operationalising of decolonising practices within social work education is explored for future implications of policy and practice development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this essay, I use Taika Waititi's 2016 Hunt for the Wilderpeople as a lens through which to discuss the management of Indigenous life by the settler colonial state, whereby certain Indigenous subjectivities are 'let to die' for the overall health of the body politic. I then turn to examine how the theatrical paramilitarised performances in the film are reflected in the on-going nature of colonial violence directed towards the Ngāi Tūhoe people, exemplified in the 2007 'anti-terror' raids codenamed 'Operation 8', and the more recent (but less well known) raids that have targeted Tūhoe since 2007. I stipulate that such raids demonstrate a return to sites of 'originary violence' as per Irene Watson's thesis (2009), where Crown sovereignty is violently reinscribed upon the frontier to reinforce the supremacy of the state. This discussion continues Vijay Devadas' argument that Operation 8 revealed a 'racialised sovereignty' that constitutes the 'legitimacy and power of state sovereignty ... in Aotearoa' (2008, 124). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the reactions of Maori (the indigenous minority) to the first two Maori-produced films in Aotearoa New Zealand: Ngati (dir. Barry Barclay, 1987) and Mauri (dir. Merata Mita, 1988). Using focus groups' responses as the basis for this article, I look at several aspects of critical reception theory. These include but are not limited to: (1) the weight of representation for minority movies; (2) the 'slipperiness' of participants' memories; (3) the multi-layered connection between myself, a Pakeha (descendant of Caucasian settlers), and the participants throughout this project; and (4) the importance - and difficulty - of using first-hand accounts of viewing to discuss the way both Maori and Pakeha approach Ngati and Mauri. These categories allow me to examine the participants' understandings of these films, but also to interrogate their viewing positions in order to make larger connections within the disciplinary fields of both critical race theory and reception theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on Africa's big role in the establishment of earliest Christianity. It discusses that the Anglican inheritance is conceived through the experience of the Yoruba people in south-west Nigeria where Christian religion came to the rest of Nigeria. It infers that the Anglicanism which came to the Yoruba was evangelical through the Church Missionary Society.