Te Tiriti as Methodology: Research as Relationship, Research as Resistance

Te Tiriti o Waitangi has always been far more than a historical artefact to me. It is a living document that sets out the ethical architecture for how we might live together in Aotearoa. Increasingly, it has also become clear that Te Tiriti offers us a research methodology — a way of working that restores relationality, demands accountability, and refuses the convenient fictions of neutrality. This new paper led by Ngaire Rae on Te Tiriti as a research methodology is a powerful reminder that Te Tiriti is not simply something we reference at the edges of our work. It can sit at the very heart of how we design, conduct, interpret, and disseminate research. 

The place to begin is always the preamble. People often skim over it, but it tells us exactly why the agreement was necessary: to protect Māori from the behaviour of settlers, and to establish a relationship of mutual benefit between two political entities. That commitment to relationship — to whanaungatanga — is foundational. It signals that research, like governance, must be grounded in respect, reciprocity and presence. It means research cannot be extractive or episodic; it must grow from relationships that precede the project and will continue beyond it. When researchers treat relationships as the method, everything changes. Decisions are slower and more deliberate, reflexivity deepens, and the work becomes accountable to actual communities rather than abstract ideas about them.

From there, Article One reminds us that kāwanatanga is not an all-access pass for Pākehā to shape Māori futures. It was never intended to give settlers power over Māori — only to give the Crown the authority to manage settlers. The methodological implications are significant. It requires Pākehā researchers to recognise that their authority is limited and conditional, and that research involving Māori must be shaped and guided by Māori. In the exemplar study, governance rested with a critical research whānau. They determined who could be considered an ally, assessed the appropriateness of the research questions, and shaped the analytical direction. This is what it looks like when researchers relinquish unilateral authority. Rather than a solo exercise in academic curiosity, the research becomes a collective act shaped by obligations to tangata whenua. Article Two then sharpens the focus: tino rangatiratanga is paramount. It recognises the enduring authority of hapū and affirms Māori rights over their own affairs. Within a research context, this requires more than respectful nods to partnership. It means Māori must hold real decision-making power over how data is gathered, interpreted, protected, stored, and shared. It means Māori scholars and thinkers must be cited, centred and taken seriously. And it means the research itself must not reproduce the colonial narratives that have marginalised Māori voices for generations. One of the most striking parts of the exemplar study is the use of relational citation — deliberately foregrounding Māori scholarship and ensuring that the intellectual whakapapa of the work reflects the whenua on which it stands. This too is methodology, and it challenges the entrenched hierarchies of whose knowledge is considered authoritative.

Article Three calls us back to the harsh realities of inequity. The Crown’s promise to ensure Māori enjoy the same rights and protections as British subjects has never been honoured. That breach is visible across every sector. For researchers, this means equity cannot be an afterthought or a modest aspiration. It must be embedded from the outset. Research guided by Te Tiriti asks whether the work disrupts or reinforces inequities; whether it tells stories about Māori decline or stories about the systems producing those outcomes; whether it is grounded in Māori aspirations or merely uses Māori data to illuminate Crown failures. Te Tiriti methodology shifts the gaze from Māori communities to colonial structures as the core problem — a move that is both politically and intellectually overdue. 

Then there is the often-overlooked oral declaration, which affirmed the protection of religious freedom and Māori custom — including wairuatanga and tikanga. Unlike Western research traditions that often imagine knowledge as detached from spirit, place and practice, Te Tiriti insists that these dimensions are inseparable. A Tiriti-based methodology requires researchers to examine their own positionality, power and cultural assumptions. It recognises that research always emerges from someone’s worldview. For Pākehā researchers especially, this means ongoing self-scrutiny, accountability, and humility. Reflexive journals, long conversations with mentors, and being answerable to Māori collectives are not decorative features — they are safeguards against doing harm. Taken together, these components give us a research methodology that is relational rather than extractive, accountable rather than self-authorising, and transformative rather than descriptive. Te Tiriti methodology is not a set of procedural steps but a way of inhabiting research relationships with integrity. It calls us to name and confront racism, to understand our own complicity in colonial systems, and to act in ways that expand Māori sovereignty rather than diminish it. It shifts research from a technical exercise to a moral and political practice.

In the current political climate, as Te Tiriti is once again under pressure, the idea of research as decolonising action feels both urgent and hopeful. Te Tiriti gives us the blueprint. It invites us to imagine and build research cultures grounded in justice, reciprocity and courage. If researchers in this country allowed Te Tiriti to guide not just what we study but how we study, who benefits, and who decides, we would be contributing to a much larger project — one aimed at shaping a Tiriti-honouring future for Aotearoa.

Rae, N., Came, H., Kidd, J., Clark, T., Kuraia, L., & Lyndon, M. (2025). Tiriti-based antiracism praxis of Pākehā allies:  An exemplar of applying Considering Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a methodology for Pākehā transformative health researchers for non-Indigenous scholars in Aotearoa New Zealand. Ethnographic Edge, 8(2), 29-42.

Full article here