File photo. Photo: 123RF
Two wāhine Māori scholars will get the chance to pursue their studies overseas after winning the Fulbright Graduate and Scholar Awards.
Hinekura Smith (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) from Northland has won the Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award.
She was feeling very humble and privileged by the honour, but said it only hit her at the awards presentation with her family beside her.
"Interestingly my 17-year-old afterwards said 'you know what Māmā I reckon I might want to do this...' that's the enduring memory that I actually take away from that presentation and one of the real motivations for wanting to put myself forward for a Fulbright award is so that my daughters and my whānau and hapū, iwi and community see that these things are possible."
Smith's studies are focused on whatu kākahu or creating traditionally woven cloaks and she will research Native American and Native Hawai'ian women's traditional clothing-making as a decolonising and culturally regenerative arts practice at the University of Washington and the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
The scholarship would give her the chance to sit and learn with indigenous women and to build relationships with other indigenous cultures, she said.
"My desire would be to come back and to promote Fulbright to our Māori researchers more, particularly our up and coming researchers, as an opportunity to connect with indigenous peoples elsewhere but also to also to bring that knowledge back and understand ourselves as part of a broader indigenous agenda of sovereignty and decolonisation."
The annual Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award is valued at up to US$37,500 for three to five months of teaching and/or research at US institutions.
Yasmin Olsen (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Tīpā) from Tāmaki Makaurau was the recipient of the Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Graduate Award.
Olsen said the award was a huge honour for her and her whānau and she was feeling over the moon.
Her studies were focused on strengthening the role Māori whānau and communities played in repairing the harm caused by criminal offending.
This came from both personal and professional observations, including from her time working as a Crown prosecutor in South Auckland.
"My research and my study is going to be looking at what are the short term changes that we can make to enable the criminal justice system to keep women and girls safe from family and sexual violence, but also what long term transformational changes can be made to the way we do criminal justice in New Zealand to produce better outcomes for Māori women who have been harmed," she said.
Olsen will complete a Master of Laws at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The Fulbright scholarship would give her the chance to be involved in the criminal justice reform work happening in the United States, she said.
"The United States is also the home of a lot of progressive scholarship in response to these issues. Academics at Yale Law School, where I intend to study, are playing a really significant role in the work towards meaningful criminal justice change happening over there."
