Taupō’s Hemopereki first Māori scholar to win US college fellowship

Published date02 September 2021
AuthorLaurilee McMichael
Publication titleTaupo Weekender
“It’s challenging because at the end of the day, New Zealand was set up as a settler colony country and Māori were excluded from that setting-up. We have a hard time in this country talking about racism, let alone the fact that we are not a Treaty people, that the country was invaded.”

But as a Māori academic, Hemopereki says part of his role is to be a critic and conscience of society.

That role is set to further develop after Hemopereki, 38, yesterday took up a fellowship at Mills College, Oakland, California. Mills College is a women’s liberal arts college which also offers graduate programmes to students of all genders. It has 1122 students.

Due to Covid-19, Hemopereki will be completing the fellowship remotely but will travel to the US at the completion of the fellowship to present a symposium paper on his research.

Hemopereki, who affiliates to Ngāti Tūwharetoa hapū Ngāti Tūtemohuta and Ngāti Rūingārangi, was raised in Taupō and attended Tauhara College before studying economics and Māori development at the University of Waikato, followed by an honours degree in Māori Studies and a master’s degree at Massey University in environmental planning. His masters thesis was on the problems for the development at Ōtuparae Headland at Acacia Bay, Taupō.

He is currently preparing to submit his body of published work for his PhD in inter-disciplinary studies, focusing on indigenous politics, policy and development, through Charles Sturt University in Australia.

“It [my PhD] looks at mana motuhake (indigenous sovereignty) and the collective future as well as looking at issues around Te Tiriti,” says Hemopereki.

“My main argument is that Te Tiriti isn’t as relevant as what society makes it out to be in that there are many iwi, including Ngāti Tūwharetoa, that didn’t sign the treaty, and how relevant is it. It’s an instrument of settler colonialism and if we are moving towards a future, that future must be based on a form of collective values.

“I would argue that those values would need to be Māori values because as Ranginui Walker says, the base culture of New Zealand is actually Māori culture so that makes sense that the values that we move forward on to be inclusive would be Māori values.”

For his PhD, Hemopereki studied haka, moteatea (traditional chants), and waiata-ā-ringa (action songs) to build a political philosophy and theory from a Māori viewpoint.

Hemopereki says New Zealand is becoming more accepting of te reo Māori and te ao Māori, and at some point...

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