ABSTRACT
Education is considered a crucial site of struggle for the redevelopment of Maori in the face of widespread high and disproportionate levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. For the most part, such disadvantage has been both produced and reproduced within the social context by unequal power relations between dominant Pakeha (non-Maori, mainly European New Zealanders) and subordinated Maori. Th is paper refl ects on innovative responses within Maori educa tion in Aotearoa/New Zealand since the 1980s; in particular, it describes some of the critical circumstances that have led Maori to develop their own theorizing related to education. Th is particular indigenous theorizing has been labeled Kaupapa Maori theory (Smith, 1988; Smith, 1999).
