The Tipuna Project: Intergenerational Healing, Settler Accountability and Decolonising Participatory Action Research in Aotearoa

PAR research is conducted by a collective of community members (‘co-researchers’) who come up with a research question about a social issue of relevance for their communities, design and undertake data collection and analysis in response to this question, and then use their findings to address their identified social issue.

In the Tipuna Project we are designing and participating in a number of activities with our ancestors, and journaling about these experiences in a form of our own choosing (story-telling, poetry, dance, collage, free-writing, divination…). These journal entries are our ‘data’ to collectively analyse and use in any publications, creations or events relating to the project.

These activities move through three phases:
1. A Titiro (‘look’) phase of learning practices for communing with our ancestors
2. A Whakarongo (‘listen’) phase of conducting a PAR project with our ancestors
3. A Kōrero (‘speak’) phase of hosting a space for the public to commune with their ancestors

The specifics of what we do during these phases are collectively decided, and where possible we are also committed to grounding our activities through wānanga [intentional (space for) more-than-human knowledge transmission], weaving our activities with local and international whitiwhiti kōrero [spiral dialogue] and sharing our activities with community, thereby ensuring our process itself enacts commitments to Indigenous sovereignty.

Taking guidance from the vision of Matike Mai (a nationwide Indigenous-led movement for constitutional transformation), we begin by doing these activities in separate Māori and Pākehā spaces, slowly moving into working together in a Relational space.

Ngā mahi [pathway of the stars]

The Tipuna Project aims to address the following social issues:
• The denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing and being
• The historically traumatic nature of research for Indigenous peoples
• Low settler accountability

We ask ‘What are the decolonial possibilities – and complexities – of including ancestors as co-researchers in PAR?’ Māori and Pākehā co-researchers are designing and participating in activities with our ancestors, and then journalling about these experiences using eclectic forms. These journals are the data that we are analysing to see how our ancestral mahi [practice] is affecting us and, in turn, how it might contribute to tino rangatiratanga [self-determination and sovereignty], intergenerational healing and settler accountability.

At the same time, through embodied, inspirited and otherwise ‘more-than-human’ approaches to these activities, we hope also to experiment with ways to decolonise the research process.

The Tipuna Project is committed to decolonising methodologies and its ethical framework is inspired by Indigenous ways of knowing and being. We act to counter denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing, the historically traumatic nature of the research space for Indigenous peoples and low settler accountability toward both coloniality and decoloniality.

As co-researchers are invited to engage with the violence to or by their ancestors, they may experience some emotional distress. We support people in this experience through careful facilitation of ancestral encounters by experienced facilitators, grounding the project through and within wānanga [intentional (space for) more-than-human knowledge transmission], and working in separate Māori and Pākehā spheres until everyone feels ready to move to a Relational sphere, “at the speed of trust”. We offer access to local healers experienced in ancestral work and project leads are available for one-to-one debriefing.

We protect Indigenous intellectual property. If Māori share Indigenous knowledge, language and/or protocols we seek permission from them before using or duplicating it. We draw up a bespoke contract on intellectual property with each ancestral expert before they participate.

We have meaningful consent procedures. We supplement one-off consent forms with procedures that involve ongoing dialogue and reverse 'counter-consent' agreements led by the co-researchers and other participants.

We respect the sensitivity of data. We invite co-researchers to produce journal entries using a form of their choosing, providing group training and one-to-one supervision on journaling, anonymising journal entries and ensuring secure storage and preservation will all enable sensitive data to be collected, used and protected.

We prevent exploitation of Indigenous co-researchers. Our three-sphere structure allows Māori co-researchers a space to participate without the weight of Pākehā demands.

Coloniality is structured by a hierarchy of knowers, knowing and knowledge that violently denigrate Indigenous ways of being in the world. This hierarchy is premised on a figure-cum-standard of the ‘human’ as one who is separate from flesh, past and cosmos. Addressing this therefore requires counter-practices that open up multiple other forms of being human – including in research, which largely assumes and reproduces the colonial figure of the human even when done in the name of ‘decolonisation’.

The Tipuna project works towards change by:
- Building capacity and knowledge exchange for practitioners committed to intergenerational healing, racial/healing justice or decolonisation, and for researchers interested in decolonising methodologies, the ‘more than human’ turn, ‘intergenerational trauma’ and/or whiteness.
- Interrupting the repetition of systemic inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborations.
- Opening up research as a space of intergenerational healing for Indigenous peoples.
- Building the accountability of settler peoples.
- Disrupting the dominance of the colonial episteme in PAR and other decolonising methodologies.

In The Tipuna Project we are designing and participating in a number of activities with our ancestors, and journaling about these experiences in a form of our own choosing. These forms include story-telling, poetry, dance, collage, free-writing, divination, and so on. The journal entries are our ‘data’ and ‘evidence’, to collectively analyse and use in any publications, creations or events relating to the project.

Knowledge about the project activities and messages are shared through the project website: https://www.thetipunaproject.co.nz/

We are also in the process of undertaking talks and activities in various media and spaces, with an emphasis on supporting Indigenous-led and other related community initiatives e.g.: City University of New York, Tāmaki Makaurau, NCRM Southampton, Turanganui-a-Kiwa.

And publishing in various formats, e.g.: ‘Decolonising interview methods: a call to look to the moon’, Campus blog: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/decolonising-interview-meth…, various art pieces

“In Aotearoa, there is a resurgence of maramataka [Maori environmental calendar] knowledge being honoured as a way of living. These practices are considered when we plan, gather, share and “interview”. A call to look to the moon is an acknowledgement of how far we have come and the more we need to do – decolonise.”

“And it is to move to the caves,
Hine-nui-te-pō,
the slowing of time, a retreat, to rest,
a cool shelter,
to preserve the paintings on the wall.
As we have listened to the echo………
Te roopū Māori are called to rest, karanga mai te pō."

“We, Pākehā, call on darkness to help us smell the smoke of the witches, the clearances, the settler-colonialism. To help us sit, writhe in the fear-full cracks of Knowing Knowledge Knower."

Indigenous ways of knowing about the world in all its facets transcend disciplinary forms of understanding and move beyond traditional academic notions of separate disciplinary boundaries.