Kaupapa Māori: A Māori Approach to Transformative Change

This article discusses the role of Kaupapa Māori in transforming Māori educational experiences within Aotearoa (New Zealand) over the past forty years. Since the initial articulation of Kaupapa Māori from the mid-1980s, there has been an exponential growth in its development and application across Aotearoa (New Zealand). There has been extensive documentation that it was within the education sector that Kaupapa Māori initiatives were developed and initiated by Māori in response to the failure of mainstream conventional education to provide for Māori children. That response was formalized through the establishment of Te Kōhanga Reo (Māori Language Nests) and Kura Kaupapa Māori (Māori Immersion Schools), which were led by Māori. Since then, there has been an increased utilization of Kaupapa Māori theory as a foundation for understanding, explaining and critiquing key issues facing Māori and Aotearoa more broadly. In the research project “Kaupapa Māori: Creating an Indigenous Model for Systems Change”, we undertook a series of interviews (n = 80) with Māori people involved in a range of sites who utilize Kaupapa Māori as the foundation in their lives, both personally, as whānau (extended family), and in their work. A key question posed was: What are the success factors within Kaupapa Māori that can inform innovative models for systems change that will transform inequities experienced by Māori? This was asked to gain insights into how Kaupapa Māori have created transformative and meaningful change across a range of sectors and sites. Where the wider project included participation from across a broad range of social contexts, this article looks at key themes that arose from how kaikōrero (participants) saw transformative change occurring through being a part of Kaupapa Māori educational developments. Kaikōrero shared multiple ways in which transformation occurred for individuals, within their whānau (extended families), through intergenerational changes and impacts at community and systems levels.