Growing into: Pacific intellectual genealogies and indigenous development

Abstract

The profile of Indigenous Studies as a discipline and programme of study has increased considerably in recent years, and this is also true at the University of Otago. At Te Tumu, the arrangement of Indigenous Studies alongside Māori and Pacific Islands Studies represents a coalition of pedagogical expertise and, with their proximity, students and academics are permitted and encouraged to make regular disciplinary border crossings. The Indigenous Development Programme, as distinct from Indigenous Studies, now extends space for critical engagements with the futurity of plural indigeneities, discerned at, and from, this particular place; Dunedin, New Zealand – Ōtepoti, Aotearoa – the University of Otago. In this article, we offer an understanding of Indigenous development as early career researchers who are respectively charged with setting a renewed heading for the programme, and ensuring it is well-provisioned for the journey. We discuss, in particular, the Pacific studies traditions shaping our approach to teaching and course design, and do so by touching on our personal experience working across Māori and Pacific research contexts. In the spirit of this special issue, we draw particular attention to the ways we see Pacific intellectual genealogies growing into the Indigenous development programme.