Tara McAllister, Leilani Walker and Sereana Naepi
Wellington and Auckland, August 10, 2022
Given that most New Zealand universities have goals for increasing Maori and Pacific student and staff numbers, we need to ask why their numbers still remain stubbornly low in the research sector – and even lower within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) departments.
Our previous research showed that one New Zealand University had failed to employ a Maori or Pacific academic in their Science Department for at least 20 years.
But while the numbers provided a snapshot of the workforce, they do not explain why so few Maori and Pacific researchers stay in the tertiary system. Our latest research aims to explain this better by looking at the experiences of 43 past and present postgraduate STEM students.
We show that simply bolstering University enrolments and plugging more students into a broken pipeline will not solve the under-representation of Maori and Pacific peoples. Furthermore, a lack of representation is negatively affecting those Maori and Pacific postgraduate students already in STEM courses.
Isolated and invisible
Universities are charged with training the next generation of scientists and growing a sustainable scientific workforce. Graduates will go on to perform research that provides solutions to emerging crises, informs national policy and creates new knowledge to help understand the world we live in.
But are universities providing an environment where Maori and Pacific postgraduate students can thrive and develop into the researcher’s society needs? In 2021, just 13% of domestic doctoral students were Maori and 5% were Pasifika.
Our research suggests that universities still have a lot of work to do. These low numbers of Maori and Pacific students and staff also affect their educational experiences. Frequently isolated, some of those who participated in the research said they felt invisible.
As one of them said, “The lack of Maori and Pacific postgraduate researchers made life for me as a Pacific researcher difficult. Having come from a different background, with a different perspective and different skills to bring to the table, I found it hard to make any real connections with my fellow researchers. This at that time felt isolating and was exacerbated by the fact that there were no Maori and Pacific staff members in my areas of expertise.”
Persistent Racism
Many Maori and Pacific postgraduates in STEM subjects reported experiencing forms of racism. This ranged from being mistaken for being Maori when they were Pasifika, to having to dispel common myths about receiving free education and only being at University due to targeted admission schemes.
Maori and Pacific postgraduates reported their identities being erased if they did not fulfil stereotypes about what they should know or how they should act. One of our interviewees said they were even told they must consider themselves “white” because they did not “act Maori.”
It is often noted that Maori and Pacifica academics experience “excess labour,” meaning that they fulfil dual roles of being Maori or Pacific as well as being academic. But our research found this often begins at the postgraduate level.
Excess labour involves dealing with racism, expectations of cultural expertise, performing cultural protocols (such as karakia and mihi whakatau), and fulfilling tokenistic diversity roles such as being photographed for University advertising.
According to one person we spoke to: “I was instantly deemed an expert on kaupapa Maori yet had only begun my journey of exploring this. We were often put on the spot and expected to explain Tikanga, Te Reo Maori, and Mātauranga Maori to others, while simultaneously being experts in non-Indigenous science.
No more ticking boxes
Our research also shows that New Zealand’s research funding system can lead to ethically questionable exercises in “box ticking” involving the token inclusion of Maori and Pacific postgraduate students.
This ranged from students being included in funding applications despite having declined to participate, to Pacific people being named as Maori investigators.
There were also allegations that Pakeha academics gained research funding for projects purporting to include Maori people and knowledge when in reality Maori were not included at all. As one of our collaborators wrote: “My name (my mana and reputation) was used against my will to secure funding for a project of which I refused multiple times to be a part.”
Where to from here?
By including the often unheard perspectives of Maori and Pacific postgraduates in STEM subjects, our research adds to the growing evidence detailing how Maori and Pacifica people are excluded in Universities.
In sharing these experiences of racism, exclusion and marginalisation, we want to remind other Maori and Pacific students they are not alone.
We also want to use this research to challenge New Zealand’s universities to move beyond tokenistic attempts at “inclusion” and “diversity”, and to begin dismantling the structures that continue to marginalise Maori and Pacific people and knowledge systems.
Our research highlights the urgent need for universities to change the culturally unsafe environment that continues to marginalise Maori and Pacific postgraduates.
Universities must create an environment where Maori and Pacific postgraduates in STEM subjects can move from surviving to thriving. That way they can get on with tackling cancer, solving the freshwater crisis or addressing the effects of climate change on their ancestral islands.
Tara McAllister is a Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington; Leilani Walker is Lecturer in Heath and Environmental Science at Auckland University of Technology and Sereana Naepi is Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Auckland. The above article and pictures have been published under the Creative Commons Licence.
