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Item Not to exact a full look at the worst : (mis)representations of state-sanctioned violence in New Zealand poetry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand(Massey University, 2025-11-26) McLean, RobertThis thesis examines how local poetry written between the First World War and the early twenty-first century has represented state-sanctioned violence done in Aotearoa New Zealand and on the state’s behalf overseas. Although this period is marked by the emergence and consolidation of a distinct New Zealand literature and the New Zealand state’s deliberate involvement in major overseas conflicts, surprisingly few poems directly represent such violence. This thesis identifies and analyses poems written in English by Māori, Pacific, and Pākehā poets that do represent state-sanctioned violence: Donald H. Lea’s “Gold Stripe” from Stand Down! (1917); Allen Curnow’s Island and Time (1941); Kendrick Smithyman’s “Vignettes of the Māori Wars” from Flying to Palmerston (1968); Māori Battalion: A Poetic Sequence (2001) by Alistair Te Ariki Campbell; and Captain Cook in the Underworld (2002) by Robert Sullivan. I use a form of mimetic close reading to examine their sources, spatial and temporal renderings, attribution of agency, prosody and modes of representation, construal of legitimacy, and violence’s uses and effects. I determine how poetry’s conventions, licenses, limitations, and omissions have helped or hindered naming, understanding, and owning Aotearoa New Zealand’s state-sanctioned violence in these five poetic works. The evidence from this poetic archive testifies to a radical disjunction between state-sanctioned violence’s historical realities and how these examples of New Zealand poetry have represented of it. They have largely failed to give voice to what poet Geoffrey Hill called “the world’s real cries” by refusing to address directly the social, political, and legal sources of state-sanctioned violence’s meaningfulness and legitimisation.Item Problematizing Māori achievement in education policy : an exploratory mixed-methods study on teacher enactment of Ka Hikitia : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Education at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand(Massey University, 2022) Niwa, Timu-o-te-rangiThis thesis analyses and describes a range of factors that impact upon mainstream primary school teachers’ enactments of the Māori education policy strategy, Ka Hikitia (Ministry of Education, 2013, 2018, 2020). Where this study differs is that it goes beyond the traditional implementation approach to policy research and seeks to identify and investigate the ‘messier’ aspects of interpretation, subjectivity and context, factors that are often missing in accounts of how policy works in schools. It has utilised an exploratory, two-phase mixed-methods approach to collect the data. The initial phase was a series of one-to-one interviews with a small cohort of primary school teachers from the Manawatū region of New Zealand. The data collated helped to develop a set of initial themes that were used to formulate the second phase survey that was sent out to a wider cohort. The themes from both two phases of the study have been used in a complementary manner to engage with research and literature from the fields of Māori education, culturally responsive pedagogy and critical policy enactment. This study concludes that teachers rely heavily upon school context and personal subjectivities to interpret and enact Ka Hikitia. It contends that teachers respond to Ka Hikitia in three key ways: considered enactment, perfunctory enactment, and/or enactment resistance. While teacher enactment is a focus of this study, it is purported that a broader consideration of how government and institutional factors impact upon teacher enactment of Ka Hikitia needs to be taken into account. Solely focusing on teachers as mere ciphers of policy reinforces institutional invisibility. This study calls for a broader understanding of how Māori student achievement is understood and problematized in Ka Hikitia. While supporting the necessity for Māori language, culture and identity to be an integral part of mainstream primary schools, this research urges policy makers and Māori academics to re-consider and re-calibrate the impact of socio-economic factors upon Māori student achievement and, henceforth, rework policy designed to address this.Item Ngāti Porou leadership : Rāpata Wahawaha and the politics of conflict : "Kei te ora nei hoki tātou, me tō tātou whenua" : a thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Māori Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2000) Soutar, MontyThe primary focus of this thesis is to explore the reasons for Ngāti Porou participation in the wars in New Zealand during the 1860s. Early writers surmised that the alliances between tribes like Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa and the lower Whanganui iwi and the settler government were due primarily to a sense of loyalty to the crown. Repetition by later historians has reinforced this notion in New Zealand folklore and historiography. While recent retrospective histories reveal a growing awareness that the motivation behind the alliances was more complex, no analysis of tribal motives worthy of the confidence of Māori has yet been recorded. This thesis initially sets out to determine whether the historical orthodoxy is founded at least for Ngāti Porou. It presents evidence showing that significant aspects of the Ngāti Porou story have been misunderstood and misrepresented by writers who have been unable to source or who have felt it unnecessary to properly canvass Ngāti Porou views and records. To date, tribal historians have on the whole refrained from presenting a tribal perspective, not because the information does not exist, but from a desire to keep such knowledge in the tribal arena where it is most relevant. Continued irritation, however, caused by historical publications that fall short when trying to comprehend the nature of Māori participation, has resulted in a freeing up of information by those who jealously guard their family's manuscripts, and others who retain the oral testimonies within the tribe, so that a re-examination is made possible. This thesis also generally seeks to link Ngāti Porou's involvement in war with leadership patterns that emerged within the tribe during the period 1865-1872, though this dimension of Ngāti Porou history is not canvassed exhaustively here. In times of crisis existing leadership patterns were challenged and as often as not new leaders emerged to lead the tribe. Perhaps the finest military leader produced by Ngāti Porou during the Hauhau encounters was Major Rāpata Wahawaha. His role in shaping Ngāti Porou's modern identity is a major theme running throughout this thesis. It is argued that his leadership and philosophy characterised the contribution by Ngāti Porou to theatres of war that followed the 1860s. It is proposed that such a contribution was both strategic and calculated to achieve gains for Ngāti Porou. Moreover, the wider question is raised: why, since the 1860s, has Ngāti Porou been so ready to join the battlefront and to stand alongside the Crown? The thesis contends that far from being motivated solely by loyalty to the Crown, Ngāti Porou entered into an alliance with the Crown in order to protect and to advance tribal interests.