The Hauntings of Doctoral Supervision in Post-Colonial

ContextsBarbara M. Grant

The University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

SRHE seminar, 16 September, 2015

A specific ‘national’ context

• Māori – 1000 years of occupation• Treaty of Waitangi, 1840• Settlers – mainly British, sought cheap

land and new beginnings• The ‘post-colonial’ now: an ‘uneasy

present’• Settler descendants/Pākehā: ‘human

hinges’• Dishonoured Treaty unsettled relations

between Māori and Pākehā.

Graduate supervision as “unfinished business”

“There is more to be said, more to think, regarding the subject of supervision. … My interest here is in matters of knowledge and identity, history and subjectivity, discourse and power, supervision and pedagogy.” (Green, 2005, pp. 151–152)

Three other acknowledgements …

Challenge to Pākehā supervisorsI’ve got a whole line of argument about the potential scientific contribution Māori can make in this country out of uniqueness – unique experience in this environment over a relatively long period. I’ve started saying Māori are the single biggest intellectual opportunity for the nation. And so, if Pākehā supervisors were to treat Māori doctoral students coming through with that view, that’d be great. (Māori supervisor)

Yet, evidence and anecdote suggest not all Pākehā ‘can’ do it …

I think a lot of academics don’t like getting involved with students like that. They think it’s inappropriate or something. They kind of just want this academic relationship over this piece of work. They don’t want the rest of it. But I don’t think you can do a really good job with Māori students unless you have got part of the rest of it. (Pākehā supervisor cited in Grant, 2013, pp.279-280)

Living with our colonial history

“As a Pākehā academic working with Māori research students, I struggle with notions of legitimacy and authenticity. While my academic credentials validate my role as a research supervisor, I am troubled by the fact that I am neither a legitimate nor an authentic guardian of mātauranga Māori [Māori knowledge] and kaupapa Māori [Māori-style] research.” (Fitzgerald, 2005, p. 40)

“I would like to learn to live … to learn to live with ghosts, in the upkeep, the conversation, the company … of ghosts. To live otherwise, and better. No, not better, but more justly. … And this being-with specters would also be … a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations.” (Derrida, 1994, pp. xvii-xviii, italics as in the original)

“Working the hyphen” as a way to supervise

“The colonizer-indigene hyphen always reaches back into a shared past … this hyphen … straddles a space of intense interest.” (Jones, 2008, p.473)

We can try to dissolve/erase the hyphen, hold it as a border, or work it as a dynamic space of inter-relationship…

How do Pākehā supervisors give an account of themselves when working with Māori doctoral students?

A larger study

• ‘Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Māori Doctoral Students’ (2007-2008)

• Team of 3 Māori and 2 Pākehā researchers (McKinley, Irwin, Williams & Middleton)

• Interviewed 38 Māori doctoral students, most doing mātauranga Māori research

• And 20 supervisors of Māori doctoral students (11 Māori and 9 non-Māori)

• Range of publications already out.

Supervisor interviews

• Questions about:– How supervision came about– Teaching and learning processes entailed– Greatest joys and challenges– Advice to others supervising Māori doc students

• Reading Pākehā interview transcripts:– My interest in the ethics and politics of supervision,

and in the intersubjectivity of Māori-Pākehā relations– And wondering …

Accounts of self

• Treaty partner• Conscientious but ignorant• Good gatekeeper• Guardian of a sacred space• Member of a whānau-of-interest

Treaty partnerTake every opportunity to affirm the culture and the values because, you know, you’re a supervisor who is employed by the university and so on, you’re also a Treaty partner. So we’re still a Treaty partner even to a student and the best thing I think a Treaty partner can do is, wherever you’re in a position to affirm the culture, then do so in supervision or in talking. Because it’s very fragile and it gets knocked all the time in the media, and so if you can take that opportunity it will bring back a hundred-fold. …

Always take the unknowing position in a cultural context, always. Even if you think you know, you don’t. And even if you do know, it’s not for you to say. If you take the unknowing position, people will inform you. And don’t speak unless asked to, and feel comfortable with travelling all the way sitting silently beside your student and saying nothing, and that’s important because you’re doing something. Respect elders. I’ve got a lovely expression that I’ve picked up along the way and it says, “even if the kuia is wrong, she is right”. (S1)

Conscientious but ignorantI’ve learned huge amounts. It’s one of the joys of working with Māori students. Because I’m Pākehā, and from the south, I knew nothing. I’ve read relatively little, but I’ve learned it through them and they’ve been very generous. They’ve allowed me to ask questions, dumb questions, and to go with them at times to places, to other related or un-related events to their doctorate.

[With my first Māori doctoral student] I was aware of, you know, colonial power imbalances and everything and, as a Pākehā, I didn’t want to get in there and be as directive as I would’ve perhaps been at times with other students. So there was a diffidence on my part which, in the end, was not helpful to the process at all. …

So having had that experience – I know that’s one experience and she’s unique in her process – but I have it in mind when I’m working with my current student who has less support. So I’m being much more engaged and quite directive around setting goals.

… being descended from the colonisers … being part of the problem. (S2)

Good gatekeeperI’m seen as a person who has authority and mana because of my position within the Pākehā academic world. And I think many [Māori doctoral students] feel that if they can kind of hold onto my hand, they can do all sorts of things. … Whereas I think if they let go of my hand and just went off in terms of Māori things, they wouldn’t survive [as doctoral students].

Because mātauranga and Māori politics and Māori cultural relationships are such that they don’t privilege, or they don’t foreground, achievement within an academic context. And so that’s what I do. I keep pulling them back into that kind of ‘Western’ frame or ‘Western’ requirement. …

So I am that acceptable face [of the university], I am the opposite of the gatekeeper; I am the gatekeeper who holds the gate open. I’m very happy to say I’m a gatekeeper, because I think I do a good job on the gate.

[My role is] anchoring and disciplining. Because Māori students’re full. Whereas a lot of Pākehā students come ‘empty’, and want to be filled up by the Western frame, what books to read and so on. Māori students are so full, too blimmin full, of ideas and things happening, you’re trying kind of beat things off them … (S3)

Guardian of a sacred spaceI think one of the things that’s really important is that whole notion of guardianship. I’m guarding not only this person but the knowledge they have and the knowledge they bring. … I’m just thinking about one student in particular here: where he talks about [tribal]tanga, that knowledge which is deeply embedded in [iwi] traditions and [iwi] tikanga. It is not for me to repeat. The second student I was thinking about, we were talking about what happens with [her iwi], about their traditions, and I got the sense that this was not to be repeated. Because we were talking about the nature of evidence and how evidence can say one thing but “do you know [this iwi] sees it this way?”.And her saying that made me think, “This is what I can’t repeat, how [this iwi] sees this”. … It’s something we build up, the students start to know that I know the difference between what is knowledge that they have and what is knowledge I can’t have. And sometimes the questions I ask, they’ll say, “I can’t tell you the answer to that”. It’s not because they don’t know, they simply can’t tell me. And I respect that. The other thing, you know, in terms of teaching and learning, doctoral supervision is a form of adult pedagogy. Yet I often wonder, why is it happening with a door closed and between two people? It’s very sacred and invisible and very powerful. (S4)

Member of a whānau-of-interestI think in some very real and practical ways, as well as some quite abstract and hard-to-describe ways, to supervise Māori doctoral students properly you get drawn into the student’s world. … In a sort of Russell Bishop term: you become part of the “whānau of interest” of that student. … The way I would theorise it, it’s as though you’re becoming part of that person’s worldview in a way … you cannot supervise at a distance. … It’s partly emotional, like all students, but it’s something to do with the sense that you’ve become part of that student’s life. As I say, the whānau of interest might actually be the whānau. So, I know, in a sense, more about those students – their lives, their families, their backgrounds – than some others and I think it’s because they’re Māori. (S5)

Member of a whānau-of-interest (2)If you’re working in a kaupapa Māori context, and not all of these theses would be kaupapa Māori, I think the supervisor relationship can be a kaupapa Māori context if you want it to be. Try to understand that, if you’re in that role, then you are a whānau member so to speak, and as a whānau member you don’t have any more power than anyone else. If you’re enjoying the privileges that come from that relationship, like being invited places and being entertained and being invited to share in giving specific knowledge, then there are responsibilities that go with it, so that’s back to the point about [unlearning the separation of the] professional and personal. So you do need to visit people when they’re sick, you do need to attend tangi with people. (S6)

Living differently with ghosts“The past is never dead, it’s not even past.”

(William Faulkner, Requiem for a nun)

Pākehā selves who ‘work the hyphen’ find: • diverse ways to supervise productively in the face of

problematic desires towards Māori and attendant (sometimes disruptive, sometimes enabling) emotions – ignorance, shame, grief, enthusiasm, enjoyment, curiosity, love …

• many possibilities (and impossibilities) for action• ways of learning to live more justly through their work as

supervisors in the history they have inherited

Every supervision is an experiment,every decision to supervise has a politics …

References

• Bell, A. (2014). Relating indigenous and settler identities: Beyond domination. London: Routledge.• Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx. New York & London: Routledge Classics.• Fitzgerald, T. (2005). Partnership, protection and participation: Challenges for research supervision in Aotearoa/New

Zealand. In P. Green (Ed.), Supervising postgraduate research: Context and processes, theories and practices (pp. 30-47). Melbourne: RMIT University Press.

• Grant, B. M. (2013). “Not all academics can do it”: The haunted spaces of post-colonial supervision. In C. Engels-Schwarzpaul, & M. A. Peters (Eds.), Of other thoughts: Non-traditional approaches to the doctorate (pp. 279–296). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

• Grant, B. M. Living with ghosts: Enabling identities for Pākehā supervisors of Māori doctoral students. Ms about to be submitted to the New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies.

• Green, B. (2005). Unfinished business: Subjectivity and supervision. Higher Education Research & Development, 24(2), 151–163.

• Jones, A. (2012). Dangerous liaisons: Pakeha, kaupapa Maori, and educational research. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 47(2), 100–112.

• Jones, A. with Jenkins, K. (2008). Rethinking collaboration: Working the indigenous-colonizer hyphen. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, & L. T. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of critical indigenous methodologies (pp. 471-486). New York: Sage.

• Jones, A. (1999). The limits of cross-cultural dialogue: Pedagogy, desire, and absolution in the classroom. Educational Theory, 49(3), 299–316.

• McClintock, A. (1994). The angel of progress: Pitfalls of the term ‘postcolonialism’. In F. Barker, P. Hulme & M. Iversen (Eds.), Colonial discourse/postcolonial theory (pp. 253–266). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

• Morris, M. (1992). Afterthoughts on ‘Australianism’. Cultural Studies, 6(3), 468–475.