Coloniality, institutional racism and white fragility: A wero to higher education

Oct 15, 2026

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This paper examines how coloniality persists in Aotearoa’s education systems by enforcing Māori assimilation into Western norms, channeling Māori into subordinate occupational pathways, and restricting Māori tino rangatiratanga. Using storytelling, the authors show how these dynamics continue within contemporary tertiary education. The paper issues a wero challenge to colleagues and university management to inspect dimensions of white fragility and move beyond surface-level inclusion of Indigenous knowledges in teaching and leadership conversations about decolonial education.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Coloniality in Aotearoa’s education systems

White fragility and white privilege

Coloniality, institutional racism and white fragility: A wero to higher education Hinekura Smith1, Jade Le Grice2, Sonia Fonua2 and David Mayeda3 1 Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Epsom Campus, 74 Epsom Ave, Auckland, 1023, New Zealand 2 Faculty of Science, Psychology, University of Auckland, Science Centre, 23 Symonds St, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand 3 Faculty of Arts, Sociology and Criminology, University of Auckland, 58 Symonds St, Grafton, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand, [email: d. mayeda@auckland.ac. nz](email: d. mayeda@auckland.ac. nz) Coloniality in Aotearoa’s education systems has persisted by forcing Māori to assimilate into Western norms, tracking Māori into subordinate occupational roles, and constraining Māori selfdetermination. Through use of storytelling, we demonstrate how these trends carry on in present-day tertiary education settings. We also issue to colleagues and management in the tertiary education sector a wero (challenge) to inspect dimensions of white fragility. Our wero challenges colleagues to move beyond their pedagogical comfort zones by learning and incorporating Indigenous knowledges into their teaching beyond surface level. For university management, our wero call on leadership to lead institutional conversations on white privileges and white fragilities, such that academic staff cannot perform a white agility by nimbly dancing around decolonial education initiatives. Keywords: coloniality, white fragility, Indigenous knowledges, higher education Introduction Between 1867 and 1969, the New Zealand government established its Native Schools system, which sought to “civilise” the Indigenous Māori population through processes of assimilation and to track Indigenous students into unskilled professions. Māori students were forced to shed their cultural values and acquire those deemed superior by British educators. Established “at a time when the state was attempting to consolidate power over Māori after more than a decade of struggle over land and sovereignty which culminated in war”(Timutimu et al., 1998, p. 119), Native Schools functioned as part of a colonial context and were central to Britain’s colonial project that implemented racist notions of cultural superiority and inferiority to build a dominant settler community (Russell, 2001) . Contemporary education systems have evolved. Today, te reo and tikanga Māori (Māori language and customs) are centred in immersion educational settings (Rona & McLachlan, 2018) . Still, Smith (2012) reminds us that Indigenous scholarship is rendered secondary or invisible relative to Western epistemologies, reflecting a deep coloniality. As explained by Quijano (2007), after colonialism ended asan overt system of domination,“European culture was made seductive: it gave access to power”(p. 169) and coerced Indigenous peoples to associate European knowledge with Western notions of development. As such, coloniality functions through Western control over racialised hierarchies of knowledge which are connected to land appropriation and labour exploitation (Mignolo, 2007, p. 478) . Contemporary scholarship demonstrates how coloniality persists in higher education (HE). Dancy and colleagues (2018) discuss the structural arrangements traced to colonialism and slavery that continue to shape American universities through patterned ill treatment of Black scholars and their scholarship. In Aotearoa’s education systems, coloniality transpires across three planes that began in the mid-1800s. The first comprises strategies of assimilation that drive Māori into Western culture, the most obvious example being attempts to extinguish te reo through education policy enacted in the 1867 Native Schools Act. However, assimilation also includes the broader loss of tikanga Māori and the over-arching privileging of Western knowledge (Kēpa & Manu’atu, 2011; Smith, 2012) . Secondly, educational coloniality materialises through tracking Māori i

FAQs

What does the paper argue about how coloniality operates in education?

It argues coloniality operates by forcing Māori assimilation into Western norms, tracking Māori into less privileged labour roles, and constraining Māori self-determination within education systems.

How does the paper connect coloniality to white fragility?

It describes white fragility as the repetitive anxieties that surface when ongoing coloniality is exposed and challenged, and it frames the challenge as requiring examination of these dynamics.

What is the purpose of the authors’ “wero” for higher education?

The authors use a wero challenge to encourage colleagues and management to move beyond comfort zones by incorporating Indigenous knowledges more deeply into teaching and by leading institutional conversations about white privileges and fragilities.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Kurz