Powerful Voices and Powerful Stories: re¯ections on the challenges and dynamics of intercultural research TANYA FITZGERALD School of Education, Unitec New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand ABSTRACT Familial circumstances, language, religion, ethnicity, social location and life experiences impact on the increasingly diverse and complex composition of individuals and their communities. While the in¯uence of these factors has been recognised in terms of our research and theorising, arguably these intellectual activities have been predicated on an unequal relationship between researcher(s) and participant(s). The production of knowledge as a consequence of research has not necessarily positioned participants (the `researched') as powerful with respect to issues of access, the conduct of the research and ownership of the intellectual and cultural products of the research process. Yet, as this paper will ask, how might research be conducted and reported with/in diverse communities that recognises the powerful position and voices of participants? This paper reports on the challenges of conducting research with Indigenous women leaders in educational organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia and suggests how research based on a collaborative cross-cultural partnership might be conducted, nurtured and sustained. Introduction We asked you to work with us because we need your voice. If we get out there and talk about how we have to advocate for our tamariki [children], for our people and for our future we get known as `radicals'. We're not, we know what we need to do but getting it done is hard. That's why we came to you. You have an understanding of nga mea MaÅori [things MaÅori] and we know you willlisten and guideus get to where we want to be. (Aroha, NZ) In 2002 a group of Ma Åori women school principals invited me to undertake a research project that documented their professional biographies and highlighted their experiences as educational leaders. The women were concerned that they could not `read' about their own experiences of school leadership in either the academic journals or professional publications and that the particular challenges they faced were never explicitly or publicly discussed. A further concern was that there was a universal ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/04/030233-13 ã 2004 Centre for Migrant and Intercultural Studies DOI: 10.1080/0725686042000315740 Journal of Intercultural Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2004