Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou) essential text Decolonizing Methodologies is an extensive critique of Western paradigms of research and knowledge. Smith challenges traditional Western ways of knowing and researching and calls for the “decolonization” of methodologies, and for a new agenda of indigenous research. According to Smith, “decolonization” is concerned with having “a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values that inform research practices”.

Smith, L. T. Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples London, UK: Zed Books, 1999 (and Otago University Press).