Kaupapa Māori research approach – key features from the literature

Kaupapa Māori is a Māori-led research paradigm that recentres te ao Māori (Māori worldviews) as the foundation for knowledge production, explicitly in response to colonial research practices that have harmed Māori communities. It is not just “research on Māori”; it is research by Māori, with Māori, and for Māori, where te reo Māori, tikanga and mātauranga Māori are taken as non‑negotiable givens rather than variables.¹²³⁴

Foundational work by Graham Smith and Linda Tuhiwai Smith frames Kaupapa Māori as both theory and praxis: a decolonising, transformative project oriented to tino rangatiratanga (self-determination), resistance to deficit framings, and the creation of positive outcomes for Māori in concrete sites such as education, health, justice, and social policy. Key principles often cited (with some variation across authors) include:⁴⁵

• Tino rangatiratanga – research supports Māori autonomy and decision‑making.
• Taonga tuku iho – centrality of Māori language, culture, and inherited knowledge.
• Ako Māori / culturally preferred pedagogy – privileging Māori ways of teaching, learning, and knowing in research design.⁵
• Whānau, whanaungatanga and whakapapa – relationality and genealogy as both ethical and analytical structures.
• Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kāinga – addressing structural inequality and everyday struggles of Māori communities.
• Kia tūpato, aroha ki te tangata, manaakitanga, kanohi kitea – ethical principles around respect, appropriate presence, care, and not trampling on people’s mana.²¹

Methodologically, Kaupapa Māori has been taken up in multiple, concrete ways: pūrākau-based narrative work, whakapapa methodologies, whānau-based methods, marae-based wānanga, whatu/weaving metaphors, and sector-specific adaptations in health, nursing, social policy, audiology, etc. Across these, the through-lines are: Māori control over research agendas, co‑productive relationships, and a praxis orientation toward improved services, policy, and equity for Māori.^67891011125

Ontologically and epistemologically, Kaupapa Māori asserts that Māori realities, histories, and cosmologies are valid, sophisticated knowledge systems; method is selected and evaluated in terms of its alignment with those realities and its contribution to Māori advancement.⁴⁵

“Research Is Ceremony” (Wilson) – key features from the literature

Shawn Wilson’s Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods articulates an Indigenous research paradigm rooted in his Opaskwayak Cree context, but deliberately framed in a way that can resonate across Indigenous traditions in Canada and Australia. He structures the paradigm around the four classic elements of research philosophy—ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology—but reconceptualises each as fundamentally relational.^13141516

Wilson’s central claims, as summarised in the foreword, publisher materials, and secondary commentary, include:^171418151613

• Relational ontology – reality is constituted by relationships; entities (people, land, ideas, ancestors, cosmos) exist in and as relationships rather than as isolated objects.
• Relational epistemology – knowing comes through engaging with and sustaining relationships; knowledge is not an abstract commodity but a living set of relational commitments.
• Axiology as relational accountability – ethics is not a separate layer added after method; the researcher is accountable to all the relationships implicated in the work, which requires respect, reciprocity, and responsibility.
• Methodology as ceremony – research is a form of ceremony whose purpose is to build and strengthen relationships; this implies ongoing reflexivity, protocol, and attentiveness rather than a fixed checklist of methods.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

The book itself performs this paradigm in form: substantial parts are written as letters to his sons and as conversational storytelling, rather than as conventional academic prose, to embody relationality and make the reader part of the circle. Wilson explicitly asks researchers to reframe research questions away from “What do I want to find out?” toward “What relationships do I want to build or strengthen, and how will I be accountable to them?”^16171315

Where Kaupapa Māori is historically tied to Māori political struggles and institutions in Aotearoa, Wilson’s work is explicitly pan‑Indigenous in its theoretical ambition: he aims to describe a paradigm shared by many Indigenous scholars in Canada and Australia, and to demonstrate how it can be enacted in practice across disciplines.¹⁴¹³

Common ground between Kaupapa Māori and Wilson’s paradigm

Despite their distinct genealogies, there is strong convergence at the level of paradigm:

• Relational worldviews Both take relationality as fundamental. Kaupapa Māori emphasises whakapapa, whanaungatanga, and collective responsibilities; Wilson reframes ontology and epistemology themselves as relational, with “research as ceremony” building and honouring relationships.^3121516
• Community accountability and benefit Kaupapa Māori insists that research be accountable to Māori communities and deliver tangible benefits—“Mā te Māori” and “Community-Up” ethics. Wilson’s notion of relational accountability likewise requires that research contribute back to the communities and relationships that make it possible, rejecting extractive, detached inquiry.^121331516
• Critique of colonial research Both emerge from deep critique of Western academic research as historically complicit in dispossession, misrepresentation, and epistemic violence. Both advocate decolonising or Indigenising research by re‑centring Indigenous knowledge systems, values, and protocols.^17213514
• Integration of ethics, method, and theory In Kaupapa Māori, principles like aroha ki te tangata, manaakitanga, and kia tūpato are not “added on”; they shape questions, methods, recruitment, analysis, and dissemination. Wilson similarly dissolves sharp divides between ethics, method, and theory by treating research as ceremony; the same relational commitments govern every stage.^2315161
• Storying as method and theory Both literatures foreground storytelling—pūrākau, narratives, letters, case studies—not simply as data but as methodological and theoretical practice. This aligns well with your interest in narrative architectures.^71961317

In short, these are compatible paradigms rather than competing ones. For a Waikato context, Kaupapa Māori can be your local, iwi‑ and hapū‑grounded methodological home, while Wilson provides a relational-theoretical lens and language that connects your work to broader Indigenous research conversations.

Distinctive particularities: where they differ

Some key distinctions that matter practically for thesis design and programme selection:

• Nation-specific vs. pan‑Indigenous orientation
  • Kaupapa Māori is explicitly anchored in Māori political, linguistic, and cultural struggles in Aotearoa; it is bound up with particular histories of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Māori-medium education, kura kaupapa, and Māori institutional projects.⁵⁴
  • Wilson’s paradigm is articulated from an Opaskwayak Cree standpoint but intentionally framed as a more general Indigenous paradigm appropriate across Canadian and Australian contexts. When working in Aotearoa, it needs to be braided into, not substituted for, local kaupapa and tikanga.¹³¹⁴
• Degree of codification
  • Kaupapa Māori has a relatively well‑developed set of articulated principles (e.g., the various lists from Smith, Cram, What Works, Katoa) and institutionalised ethics expectations, used by agencies, government departments, and Māori evaluation associations.³¹²⁴⁵
  • Wilson’s work is more philosophical and narrative: he resists rigid proceduralisation, focusing instead on the inner coherence of the paradigm (ontology–epistemology–axiology–methodology) and the metaphor of ceremony.¹⁵¹⁶
• Primary sites of application to date
  • Kaupapa Māori is already widely used in Aotearoa across education, health, social policy, nursing, and Māori development research; there is a large applied literature showing concrete use cases and sector-specific adaptations.^20211011127
  • Research Is Ceremony is often used as a conceptual and pedagogical text across many disciplines—but there is a relatively smaller body of empirical work that explicitly “brands” itself as Wilsonian in the way Kaupapa Māori work does for Māori contexts.
• Political register
  • Kaupapa Māori retains a strong, explicit political register in relation to tino rangatiratanga, state policy, and institutional power in Aotearoa.⁴⁵
  • Wilson is certainly political, but the emphasis is more on epistemic/ontological transformation and less on a specific national policy field.

For you, this suggests a braided approach: Kaupapa Māori as your anchor methodology when working with Māori communities or within Māori and Indigenous Studies; Wilson as a cross‑cutting theoretical framework for relational accountability, particularly helpful when you want to: (1) articulate your work to non‑Māori Indigenous and global audiences, or (2) push conversations in computing, AI, and media theory about what a relational paradigm actually demands.

Which research subjects each approach fits best

Both approaches are paradigmatic rather than topic‑bound, but certain subject areas align especially well.

Kaupapa Māori is particularly suited to:

• Projects grounded in Māori communities or issues in Aotearoa e.g., Māori health and nursing practice, Māori leadership, Māori precariat and labour, Māori models of wellbeing, Māori audiology and hearing services, Māori housing and marae‑led interventions.^211011122223
• Education, language revitalisation, and Māori-medium contexts e.g., research in kura kaupapa, Māori models of pedagogy, Māori leadership in education, and whare wānanga contexts.²⁴²⁰⁵⁴
• Māori-centred creative practice and cultural production Using whatu, whakapapa, pūrākau, atua‑based design, raranga, etc., as both method and form in art, design, performance and media research.²⁵²⁶⁶⁷

For Waikato degrees, this aligns most directly with MA in Māori and Indigenous Studies, MA in Pacific and Indigenous Studies, and Māori‑centred projects in MMCT, MDes, or even ME/MSc where Māori partners are central.^2728293031

Wilson’s “research as ceremony” is particularly suited to:

• Cross‑Indigenous and comparative work e.g., relating Māori frameworks to Cree, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, or other Indigenous epistemologies; theorising relationality across multiple Indigenous traditions.¹⁹¹⁴¹³
• Relational and narrative‑heavy research e.g., autoethnographic work, story-based inquiry with Elders and knowledge holders, or creative theses where the research text itself functions as ceremony (letters, dialogues, multimodal storytelling).^16171315
• Interdisciplinary theory linking ontology/epistemology and design e.g., using relational ontology and accountability to interrogate AI architectures, data governance, or media infrastructures.

You can absolutely combine both: for instance, a Waikato MA or MMCT project that is methodologically Kaupapa Māori, but whose theoretical chapter explicitly uses Wilson’s paradigm to articulate how you understand relational accountability in your media/AI practice.

University of Waikato Masters – structures, expectations, and careers

Your list of “Arts Masters || Engineering Masters || Media and Creative Technologies Masters // Science and Technologies Masters || Design Masters” corresponds roughly to distinct qualification families at Waikato. Below is a mapping to actual degrees and how they might intersect with your Indigenous research paradigm work.

1. Arts Masters (MA – including Māori & Indigenous Studies; Pacific & Indigenous Studies; Screen & Media)

Core structures and content

Waikato’s Master of Arts is an advanced degree in an Arts subject with options to do either a 180‑point taught programme or a 120‑point research MA with a substantial thesis. MA can be taken under the Division of Arts, Law, Psychology & Social Sciences or the Faculty of Māori & Indigenous Studies.³²³⁰

Within the Faculty of Māori & Indigenous Studies, MA subjects include Māori and Indigenous Studies and Pacific and Indigenous Studies. These programmes focus on:^28293027

• Māori language, knowledge, and traditions as central to understanding Aotearoa.²⁷²⁸
• Indigenous Studies as a global field, linking Māori issues to broader Indigenous struggles and theories.²⁹²⁸
• Critical questions about knowledge, power, colonialism, development, migration, and environmental futures in the Pacific and Indigenous worlds.²⁹

A research‑heavy MA typically involves advanced coursework plus a thesis where you can explicitly adopt Kaupapa Māori and/or Wilson’s paradigm.

What you’d actually do

• Taught papers on Māori and Indigenous theories, decolonising methodologies, language and culture, Indigenous politics, and creative/performative elements such as kapa haka and creative technologies.²⁸²⁷²⁹
• A supervised thesis (often 90–120 points) where you design and carry out a research project – ideal for using Kaupapa Māori as core methodology, with Wilson’s relational ontology as your theoretical scaffold.

Careers

Graduates are positioned for roles where bicultural competence and Indigenous knowledge are key: iwi/hapū development, Māori and Indigenous policy roles, government and NGOs, research positions, education, media, and community leadership. For you, this pathway is the most direct way to anchor your Indigenous research frameworks in an institutionally recognised Māori & Indigenous Studies environment.³⁰³²²⁸

There is also an MA in other Arts subjects (e.g., Screen and Media Studies, Sociology, Philosophy). These can host Indigenous methodologies if you negotiate with supervisors, but the institutional “home” is less explicitly Indigenous than in Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao.³²³⁰²⁷

2. Media and Creative Technologies Masters – Master of Media and Creative Technologies (MMCT)

Core structures and content

The Master of Media and Creative Technologies (MMCT) is explicitly aimed at media creators, designers, and producers who want advanced skills in screen and media. It is offered across Screen and Media Studies, the School of Design, and Waikato Management School, and allows specialisation in areas such as:^3334353637

• Short film and documentary
• Animation and photography
• AI and VR
• Scriptwriting and online content
• Podcasts and multimedia installations³⁵³⁶³³

The programme combines taught papers with a supervised portfolio of audio‑visual projects as your primary research output.³⁴³⁶³³

What you’d actually do

• Advanced coursework in screen and media theory, creative technologies, and research methods appropriate to creative practice.
• A large creative portfolio (major work or works) – e.g., films, interactive installations, VR pieces, AI‑driven media, podcasts – accompanied by a critical exegesis.³⁶³³³⁴
• Extensive collaborative project work, with strong technical and production support.³³³⁵³⁶

Careers

MMCT graduates move into roles such as audio‑visual producer, animator, creative business owner, commercial freelancer, journalist, producer, social media manager, scriptwriter, editor, and VR/AI designer. The programme emphasises industry links with organisations such as Wētā Workshop and Warner Bros International Television NZ.³⁵³⁶³³

Fit with Kaupapa Māori and Wilson

MMCT is an excellent site for Indigenous creative research where the primary “data” are your media artefacts and community collaborations. You could, for example:

• Design a thesis where a suite of VR/AI media works are created as ceremonial sites of relational engagement, using Wilson’s paradigm to theorise how the works enact relational accountability.¹³¹⁵¹⁶
• Ground the project in Kaupapa Māori by collaborating with specific iwi/hapū, using pūrākau and whakapapa as narrative and structural logics for your media works.⁸¹²⁶⁷

MMCT will prioritise creative and technical execution plus a practice-based research exegesis, rather than a heavy pure‑theory thesis.

3. Engineering Masters – Master of Engineering (ME / Master of Engineering Practice)

Core structures and content

The Master of Engineering (ME) at Waikato is a research‑focused degree aimed at graduates who want to develop an innovative solution to an engineering question. It usually takes 12 months and can be structured as:^3839404142

• 30 points of taught papers + 90‑point dissertation, or
• A 120‑point thesis.³⁹⁴⁰

Endorsements and project areas include biological, chemical, civil, mechanical, materials, environmental, electrical and electronic engineering, mechatronics, and robotics; software engineering projects run via Computer Science.⁴⁰³⁸³⁹

What you’d actually do

• Advanced technical papers in your chosen engineering field.
• A substantial design/research project—often in collaboration with industry partners like Fonterra, Gallagher, Oji, Tetra Pak, or ArborGen.⁴¹³⁹⁴⁰
• Work in specialised labs and large‑scale facilities, potentially building prototypes such as “snake robots” for disaster rescue or brain‑controlled prosthetics (actual past examples).³⁸³⁹⁴⁰

Careers

Graduates move into professional engineering roles, R&D positions, or begin research careers (e.g., PhD) in their technical field. The degree is strongly linked to engineering practice and industry.³⁹⁴⁰³⁸

Fit with Kaupapa Māori and Wilson

Engineering is not an obvious home base for Indigenous methodologies, but there is increasing scope for:

• Kaupapa Māori‑aligned engineering projects, e.g., Indigenous-led environmental engineering, marae infrastructure, sustainable energy, or housing that follow Māori co‑design principles and tikanga.²²²³
• Using Wilson’s relational accountability to reframe how you design, document, and govern socio‑technical systems (robotics, sensing, infrastructure) in relation to communities and lands.

However, you would need to negotiate carefully with supervisors to make Indigenous methodology more than a “context chapter”; the default expectation is a conventional engineering research design strongly oriented to technical performance.

4. Science and Technologies Masters – Master of Science (MSc) and Master of Science (Research)

Core structures and content

The Master of Science at Waikato is described as flexible and customisable, combining taught papers with a dissertation (60 or 90 points) or thesis (often 90–120 points depending on structure). You can specialise in fields like Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Electronics, Engineering, Materials and Process Engineering, Physics, Psychology, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics.^4344454647

The MSc (Research) version is more research‑intensive, typically 18–24 months with a larger research thesis component, and is framed as ideal for those wanting a full research experience.⁴⁷⁴³

What you’d actually do

• Discipline-specific advanced coursework.
• Independent research using lab, field, or computational methods, with substantial data collection and analysis.
• Work in world‑class labs (NMR, DNA sequencing, herbarium, computing clusters, etc.), and potential collaborations with organisations like NIWA, AgResearch, Plant & Food, Landcare.⁴⁴⁴⁶⁴³

Careers

Graduates typically move into science-related industry roles, government science agencies, analytics and data science roles, or further research study.⁴⁵⁴⁶⁴⁴

Fit with Kaupapa Māori and Wilson

The strongest synergy here would be in fields like environmental science, psychology, or computer science/data science where you can:

• Use Kaupapa Māori to co‑design research with Māori communities (e.g., climate resilience for Māori fisheries, marae‑based environmental monitoring, Māori‑centred health models).^1012232122
• Apply relational accountability to re‑imagine data practices, modelling choices, and evaluation metrics in AI or computational projects.

The challenge is that MSc structures are still largely calibrated to Western scientific norms; a Māori & Indigenous Studies or MMCT/MDes setting may give you more freedom to experiment with paradigm and form.

5. Design Masters – Master of Design (MDes)

Core structures and content

The Master of Design (MDes) is an advanced degree focused on design theory, technology, and original design research, building on the Bachelor of Design. Design at Waikato is distinctive in that it deeply integrates design and computer science, explicitly training “designers who can code”.^48495031

MDes is centred on:

• Taught courses in advanced design theory, digital media, and design research methods.
• A large‑scale design research project where you plan, develop, and carry out a specialised investigation in an area like interaction design, multimedia, UX/UI, or motion/graphics design.^49503148

What you’d actually do

• Engage with both conceptual design questions (how designers think and what they produce) and technical skill‑building (e.g., interactive media, games, web, app, VR).³¹
• Design, prototype, and evaluate a significant design artefact or system as research, supported by an exegesis.
• Collaborate with academics and industry partners in the design and creative practices sector.^51484931

Careers

MDes and Design at Waikato lead to roles such as advertising designer, interaction designer, games designer, multimedia specialist, motion graphics designer, design educator, UI/UX researcher, and creative entrepreneur.⁵⁰³¹

Fit with Kaupapa Māori and Wilson

MDes aligns very strongly with your tooling interests:

• You can treat design research as ceremony, explicitly structuring UX, interaction flows, and service journeys as relational practices accountable to Indigenous communities.
• You can build Māori‑centred design systems (e.g., interfaces that encode whakapapa or pūrākau, AI tools that operationalise Kaupapa Māori ethics) within a programme that expects you to prototype and test digital artefacts.

Design’s integration with computer science makes it an ideal host environment for multi‑agent systems, AI‑augmented creative tools, and Indigenous interaction paradigms.

How these pathways align with your research interests and possible combinations

Given your background (software architecture, multi‑agent AI, narrative systems, Indigenous epistemologies) and your plan to work with multiple perspectives and potentially multiple theses, some patterns emerge.

A. If your core priority is Indigenous paradigm work (Kaupapa Māori + Wilson) with strong theoretical depth

• Primary home: MA in Māori and Indigenous Studies or Pacific and Indigenous Studies.^30272829
• Methodological anchor: Kaupapa Māori, whakapapa, pūrākau, and Māori‑centred relational models of health, wellbeing, or leadership.^1172124
• Theoretical overlay: Wilson’s relational ontology/epistemology/axiology to articulate your understanding of research as ceremony and relational accountability.¹⁵¹⁶

You could then, in a second master’s or later PhD, transpose those paradigms into more technical or creative contexts (MMCT, MDes, or an AI‑oriented MSc).

B. If you want Indigenous theories embedded in creative media practice

• Primary home: Master of Media and Creative Technologies (MMCT), potentially with a subject emphasis in Screen & Media or Creative Technologies.^34363335
• Project type: A portfolio of media works (film/VR/AI‑driven installations/podcasts) that enact Indigenous relational paradigms in their form, production processes, and community engagement.
• Indigenous method integration: Use Kaupapa Māori as your ethical and methodological base when working with Māori communities; use Wilson’s framework to theorise your creative process as ceremony.

This path suits you if you want to spend a lot of time actually making media systems and exploring how tools and infrastructures embody or violate relational accountability.

C. If you want to push on AI / computational systems with Indigenous paradigms built into their architecture

Here you need a degree that legitimises highly technical work:

• Option 1 (technical‑forward): MSc (e.g., Computer Science, Data Science) or ME (Software/Mechatronics) with a thesis on Indigenous‑centred AI agents, narrative systems, or toolchains.^42414445
  • You’d build prototypes and algorithms, then bring in Kaupapa Māori and Wilson as guiding ethics for data, interfaces, and evaluation.
  • This requires supervisory buy‑in to treat Indigenous paradigms as more than superficial “ethics section”.
• Option 2 (design‑forward): Master of Design (MDes) with an Indigenous AI narrative system as your central design research project.^48495031
  • Here, your code, interface, and interaction design are the research site.
  • Kaupapa Māori and Wilson frame how you define “good” design: e.g., design that sustains whakapapa relationships, honours tikanga in its data flows and user journeys, and enacts ceremony as interaction.

Given your interest in tooling and narrative architectures, MDes or MMCT are particularly attractive as second degrees after an MA in Māori & Indigenous Studies, because they let you materialise those paradigms in systems and artefacts.

D. About doing more than one master’s

Your intuition and your former director’s comment about multiple theses tracking different perspectives make sense here:

• A Māori & Indigenous Studies MA gives you legitimacy and depth in Kaupapa Māori and Indigenous theory in the Waikato context.
• A design‑ or media‑centred master’s (MDes or MMCT) lets you prototype and test multi‑agent and narrative AI systems as Indigenous research practices.
• If you later decide you want to be legible in highly technical R&D/industry spaces, a targeted MSc/ME can add engineering/science credentials.

The main practical constraint will be time, funding, and supervisory bandwidth. From a research‑architecture perspective, however, your plan to treat each master’s thesis as a different vantage point on a shared question—Indigenous relational paradigms in media/AI—maps remarkably well onto the combination of Kaupapa Māori and Wilson’s research-as-ceremony paradigm. <span style="display:none">^{52535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182838485868788}</span>