Indigenous Leadership: A Complex Consideration

Abstract

Our collaboration on the writing of this chapter reflects the complex nature of Indigenous leadership. We each draw on our experiences as Indigenous educators working within Indigenous and western contexts–Wong and Perry from Hawaiian perspectives, Johnston from a Māori perspective, and Maaka from a Māori perspective in the diaspora of Hawai‘i. In keeping with our introduction, our stances on Indigenous leadership are shaped by the contexts in which we live and work, by our missions as educators in higher education, by our efforts to mentor a successor generation, and by our histories as peoples violently dislocated from the fundamental markers of our identities–sovereignty, ancestral lands, language, and cultural knowledge. This dislocation was (and still is) brought by the hands of colonial forces hell bent on forcing geopolitical, economic, and sociopolitical agendas upon us–at our expense. As a result, Māori (with the breached Treaty of Waitangi) and Hawaiians (with the illegal overthrow of a constitutional monarchy) face modern day challenges in recovering all that has been stripped away.

In our writing, then, we choose not to limit our discussion on Indigenous leadership in education to the context of “preschool through university schooling.” Since we view “education” as pertaining to anything that leads us out of ignorance, we choose to expand our discussion to the broadest context of Indigenous self-determination that includes the socio-politics of Indigenous knowledge, models, methods, and content within formal and non-formal educational systems. Similarly, our use of the word “community” refers to Indigenous peoples who have been brought up within the geographic boundary of their traditional lands for the purpose of making change. Change makers include individuals from many different arenas including education, health, law, business, politics, and culture and the arts.

While there are many points of interest in an examination of Indigenous leadership, this chapter focuses on historical trauma and Indigenous leadership, well-executed leadership, leadership ascension, and leadership succession. Although our commentaries draw on the Māori and Hawaiian cultures, we believe that they also resonate with other Indigenous peoples. As well, the following commentaries are not to be embraced as received knowledge, rather, they are perspectives designed to invite debate.