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In this episode, Heather and Melissa Quesnelle chat with leading Māori health researcher Dr. Helen Moewaka Barnes about her pathway to becoming a health researcher and how she approaches her work. For Helen, being introduced to academic research through community directed projects meant she has always approached her work with Māori communities at the center. She describes feeling uncomfortable describing her work as research but rather describes her work as Kairangahou: a person who engages in the process of weaving. In this episode, Helen describes how kairangahou is distinct from Kaupapa Māori and how both are essential for the work she does. Her life story and approach demonstrate how kairangahou decenters the researcher, while honoring the knowledge itself and following where it directs you. For Helen, kairangahou is the process of building upon the knowledge, sciences, wisdom of past generations as she and her partners engage in producing new knowledge. Helen also provides us with clarity about what Kaupapa Māori is and is not as she continues to resist colonial structures by refusing to define, delineate, or differentiate Māori concepts and ways of being. Indeed, she challenges listeners to reflect on Western science: What is Western science? Does it exist? Why are Western scientists not asked to define, differentiate, and explain the origins of Western science while Māori are frequently asked these questions? Helen and her colleagues push forward, grounded in who they are and refuse to be compared to Western standards. To illustrate this point Helen shares two research projects with us: one focused on Māori birthing practices, a project co-created with her daughter, and the other focused on her understanding of climate change from a Māori perspective. In both cases, Helen stresses that unless we shift our collective perspective from focusing on problems and instead focus on whanau (extended family relations) and listen to the agency of the natural world these ‘problems’ will persist.
Dr. Helen Moewaka Barnes is a professor at Massey University in Auckland, Aotearoa (Or New Zealand), where she is Co-Director of the SHORE and Whariki Research Center. The centre hosts both multidisciplinary research groups working in a Treaty of Waitangi partnership model to produce research that improves health and wellbeing in Aotearoa and beyond.
This podcast is created by the Impact Chair in Transformative Governance for Planetary Health at the University of Victoria, with production support from Cited Media. We receive additional support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research You can find us at https://indigenousplanetaryhealth.ca/
