International Encyclopedia of Education (Fourth Edition) - “The mis-education” of Aotearoa: the struggle for Indigenous history in New Zealand

Two centuries after the arrival of European colonizers, Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand, continue the struggle to teach and center their own history. Over that time, Māori pasts were displaced in the education system by British history which dismissed local Indigenous pasts as unreliable myths and “pre-history.” School curricula were instead dominated by settler pasts that favored nation-making narratives and a Eurocentric discipline dominated by empiricism and written sources. Māori have resisted this “mis-education” for more than a century, fighting to reclaim the past on their own terms. This essay reflects on the enduring struggle that eventually led to the reset, and ongoing skepticism, of the National History curriculum in Aotearoa for all schools from 2023.