EQUITY & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, 44(1), 115–132, 2011 Copyright C  University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education ISSN: 1066-5684 print / 1547-3457 online DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2010.540972 Working at the Interface: Indigenous Students’ Experience of Undertaking Doctoral Studies in Aotearoa New Zealand Elizabeth McKinley and Barbara Grant The University of Auckland Sue Middleton University of Waikato Kathie Irwin Te Puni K¯ okiri/Ministry of M ¯ aori Development Les R. Tumoana Williams Ng¯ a Pae o te M¯ aramatanga M¯ aori (indigenous) 1 doctoral students in Aotearoa New Zealand face challenges not usually experi- enced by other doctoral candidates. We draw on data from in-depth interviews with 38 M¯ aori doctoral candidates and argue that because of the tensions between academic disciplinary knowledge frame- works and knowledge drawn from te ao M¯ aori (the M¯ aori world) indigenous students have additional cultural, academic, and personal demands placed on them while aiming to produce research theses that meet conventional standards of academic scholarship. Complex methodological and ethical is- sues also emerge in undertaking doctoral research projects situated at the interface of academy and indigenous communities. Moreover, M¯ aori students experience various degrees of tension between their sometimes strong cultural identities and their emerging and, therefore, less certain identities as researchers and scholars. In her influential work, Decolonizing Methodologies, M¯ aori academic, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), challenges the silence on the subject of research and indigenous peoples that persists within academic institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand 2 and elsewhere throughout several decades. Indigenous peoples have been the objects of others’ research—research that has been strongly embedded in the colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand (L. T. Smith, 1999) as well as Canada, Australia, and the US (Battiste & Barman, 1995; Briscoe, 2009; Mihesuah & Wilson, 2004). However, more recent indigenous cultural and language revitalization developments together with other social movements in the 1960s and 1970s (see, for example, Alfred, 1995; Walker, The authors acknowledge the insightful comments made by Dr. Irena Madjar on an earlier version of this paper. Address correspondence to Elizabeth McKinley, Starpath Project, c/o Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, Aotearoa, New Zealand. E-mail: e.mckinley@auckland.ac.nz