Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, BA, MA (Hons), PhD, DipT
Honorary Doctor of Laws

Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith of Aotearoa (New Zealand) is an internationally accomplished scholar and researcher who has worked in and influenced the field of Māori education and health for many years. Her groundbreaking book Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples (1998) remains an international best seller, translated into Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, and Bhasa Indonesian. This seminal work is a foundational resource for critiques of the existing relationship between dominant institutional research protocols and Indigenous knowledge systems. It has led to many other authors publishing books that guide students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, today and into the future.

Smith is herself widely published in numerous journals and books. She continues to inspire Indigenous thinkers to become scholars of their own epistemologies, and to recognize and relearn that Indigenous peoples need to lead research based on their own traditional ways of inquiry.

Smith has held several positions, including the founding Co-Director of the Maori Centre of Research Excellence, the Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori and Dean of the School of Māori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. She is currently Professor of Maori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato.

Smith has received many awards for research excellence and contribution to Maori education. In 2013 she was honoured as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services in education and to Māori people. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2016. In 2017 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Education. 

With her colleague and husband, Professor Graham Smith, she co-developed the first undergraduate and graduate courses on Māori education and Indigenous education to be taught at a New Zealand university.

Smith provides an invaluable reference point for any institution committed to Indigenizing its spaces and approaches to scholarship. She has called out clearly for academic institutions to recognize that Indigenous knowledge(s) should not be subordinate to dominant scholarly knowledge(s), but rather must be respected as parallel ways of knowing. 

For her pioneering work and accomplishments, and her tireless championing of Indigenous research and scholarship, The University of Winnipeg is proud to bestow upon Linda Tuhiwai Smith an Honorary Doctor of Laws.

Photo Credit: Te Rāwhitiroa Bosch