January 18, 2016
New dean challenges Muss stereotype
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Jake the Muss could get schooled if he turns up in the classroom Waikato University’s new dean at the School of Maori and Pacific Development.
Professor Brendan Hokowhitu from Ngāti Pukenga has made a career of looking into stereotypes about Maori and other indigenous men.
That took him from Otago University, where he ended up as associate professor in Te Tumu, School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies and the first Associate Dean (Māori) within the division of humanities, to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where he has spent the past four years as dean of the faculty of native studies.
Professor Hokowhitu says the stereotype that Maori do well at sport as opposed to other areas is part of a general view of indigenous men that was linked to colonial history.
“I found that part of colonial history was limiting Maori to certain roles, so I’d call a lot of my research a history of contemporary stereotypes.
“Curricula in native schools for example was very focused on the physical, where for a long time for instance native schools didn’t offer School Certificate, meaning Māori actually didn’t have access to careers beyond physical labourer jobs. The Jake the Muss image was in some ways very real in that it arose out of that colonial history.”
More recent work has been on how Māori men are being portrayed in in both mainstream and Maori media.
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