All Thinkers

Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Māori scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is one of the most important Indigenous thinkers on research and education in the world today. She was born in 1950 in Whakatāne, a town on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. Her family belongs to two Māori iwi (tribes): Ngāti Awa on her father's side and Ngāti Porou on her mother's side. Her father, Sir Hirini Moko Mead, is himself a famous Māori scholar and anthropologist. As a teenager, she lived in the United States while her father completed his PhD. It was the late 1960s, a time of huge social change: the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, American Indian activism. These years shaped her political awareness. Back in New Zealand in the 1970s, she joined Ngā Tamatoa, a young Māori activist group that campaigned for te reo Māori (the Māori language) in schools. She became an educator and a scholar. She worked for many years at the University of Waikato, where she held senior leadership roles. She is now a distinguished professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, a Māori university. Her 1999 book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples made her internationally famous. It has been translated into five languages and cited hundreds of thousands of times. In 2023 she won the Rutherford Medal, New Zealand's highest scholarly honour. In 2016 she was appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal, which hears Māori claims against the New Zealand government. She is still active today.

Origin
Aotearoa New Zealand
Lifespan
1950-present
Era
Late 20th-21st Century
Subjects
Indigenous Studies Research Methodology Decolonisation Māori Studies Education
Skills
Critical Thinking Research Skills Ethical Thinking Cultural Heritage And Identity Creative Expression
Why They Matter

Smith matters for three reasons. First, she changed how academic research treats Indigenous peoples. For centuries, Western researchers studied Indigenous communities from the outside. They took stories, samples, measurements, and objects. They wrote books that Indigenous people rarely benefited from. Smith's 1999 book Decolonizing Methodologies named this pattern and demanded change. She insisted research with Indigenous communities should serve those communities, be led by them, and respect their knowledge. Her arguments have reshaped universities, funding bodies, and research ethics boards around the world.

Second, she helped establish Indigenous methodologies as a serious academic field. Before her book, it was hard to get Indigenous ways of researching recognised as legitimate. She showed that Indigenous knowledge has its own valid methods, its own standards, and its own rigour. Her work made space for new fields of Indigenous studies and influenced scholars on every continent.

Third, she combines scholarship with action. She has never been only an academic. She was an activist in Ngā Tamatoa as a young woman. She has served on the Waitangi Tribunal. She helped build Māori universities and research centres. Her career shows that serious thinking and serious community work can be the same activity. This model of the engaged scholar has inspired a generation of Indigenous researchers worldwide. When the hashtag #BecauseOfLindaTuhiwaiSmith went viral in 2020, thousands of scholars shared what her work had made possible for them.

Key Ideas
1
Research Is Not a Neutral Word
2
Whose Knowledge Counts?
3
Kaupapa Māori Research
Key Quotations
"The word itself, 'research', is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary."
— Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 1999, opening line
This is the opening sentence of Smith's famous book. It is meant to shock. Research normally sounds positive: learning, discovery, progress. For Indigenous communities, she argues, it has often meant the opposite: being watched, measured, and taken from. By calling research 'one of the dirtiest words', Smith forces the reader to rethink what research has actually meant in the lives of colonised peoples. For students, this line is a lesson in how a single sentence can reset a whole conversation.
"Research is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism."
— Decolonizing Methodologies, 1999
'Inextricably' means impossible to separate. Smith's claim is that modern Western research and European colonial expansion were not two separate things that sometimes touched. They were tied together from the start. Explorers mapped new lands for their empires. Missionaries studied local languages to convert local peoples. Anthropologists catalogued cultures that governments wanted to control. Scientists gathered samples from places their countries were colonising. For students, the quote is useful for thinking about how knowledge and power have worked together in history.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When students first learn about research methods
How to introduce
Before teaching the usual research methods (surveys, interviews, experiments), share Smith's opening line: 'research is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary.' Ask students why she might say this. What would it feel like to have your community studied over and over by outsiders who take what they want and leave? Then introduce her framework. This is a powerful way to start any research methods lesson. It helps students see that methods are not neutral. They exist in history, shaped by power.
Cultural Heritage and Identity When celebrating different ways of knowing
How to introduce
Ask students: what has your family, community, or culture taught you that you would not learn in a textbook? Most students will have examples: cooking knowledge, stories, ways of caring for the sick, ways of reading weather, moral lessons from elders. These are real knowledge. Smith's work says all of this counts. Indigenous peoples' knowledge systems deserve respect. So do other forms of community knowledge. This is an affirming conversation that helps students value what their families have taught them.
Research Skills When discussing the ethics of interviewing or surveying people
How to introduce
Share some of Smith's Kaupapa Māori principles. Research should benefit the community, not only the researcher. Researchers should introduce themselves properly, share meals, respect elders. Ask students: if you interview someone for a school project, what would respectful research look like? How would you make sure they benefit too? This is a practical ethics discussion that transfers across many future settings: journalism, medicine, social work, academic research.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, the 2021 interview with Smith in the Los Angeles Review of Books is accessible and covers her main ideas in conversational form. Her YouTube lectures, including those given at the University of Victoria and the University of Hawaiʻi, are widely available. The documentary material produced around her 2023 Rutherford Medal gives good biographical context. For her book, Decolonizing Methodologies itself is readable for undergraduate students; the third edition (2021) has a useful updated preface.

Key Ideas
1
Decolonizing Methodologies (1999)
2
Insider Research and Its Challenges
3
Ngā Tamatoa and Te Reo Māori
Key Quotations
"We have different ways of knowing, different ways of being, different ways of doing."
— Paraphrased from Decolonizing Methodologies and later interviews
Smith is making a positive claim about Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous peoples are not just a source of interesting stories for outsiders to study. They have their own ways of knowing the world: careful, long-tested, different from Western science but not worse than it. They have their own ways of being in community and of relating to land and to ancestors. They have their own ways of doing research, of teaching, of healing. For students, the quote is useful as a reminder that diversity runs deep. Different cultures do not just have different customs. They have different whole systems of thought and practice.
"From an Indigenous perspective Western research is more than just research that is located in a positivist tradition. It is research which brings to bear, on any study of Indigenous peoples, a cultural orientation, a set of values, a different conceptualization of such things as time, space and subjectivity."
— Decolonizing Methodologies, 1999
Smith is making a careful point. Western research is not just a set of techniques (surveys, experiments, interviews). It is also a cultural tradition. It has assumptions about what time is, what space is, what makes something real. These assumptions often clash with Indigenous views. For example, many Indigenous cultures see past, present, and future as overlapping, not separate. They see places as alive with history, not as empty grids. A Western researcher who ignores this is not being objective; they are imposing their own culture while claiming to be neutral. For students, the quote teaches a useful habit: notice the hidden assumptions in any research framework.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Ethical Thinking When students study the history of science and empire
How to introduce
Smith links the rise of Western science to European colonialism. The two grew together. Ask students to research one historical example: botanists who collected plants in colonised lands, doctors who tested medicines on enslaved people, anthropologists who catalogued cultures their governments were ruling. What happened to the samples and data? Who benefited? This helps students see that science has a complicated history, not a purely heroic one. It also prepares them for modern debates about bio-prospecting and data sovereignty.
Cultural Heritage and Identity When discussing language revival and cultural recovery
How to introduce
Tell the story of Ngā Tamatoa and the te reo Māori petition of 1972. In one generation, Māori activists helped bring their language back from near-extinction. Smith was part of this movement as a young woman. Ask students: what would it take to save a language or a tradition that was being lost? What part do young people play? This is an inspiring and realistic conversation that connects to many communities around the world facing language loss.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, Decolonizing Methodologies (1999, 2012, 2021) is the essential text. Smith's 2005 chapter 'On Tricky Ground: Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty' in the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research is a strong later essay. The 2008 Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, which she co-edited with Denzin and Lincoln, gathers many important contributions. For related work, Margaret Kovach's Indigenous Methodologies (2009) and Shawn Wilson's Research Is Ceremony (2009) are both valuable.

Key Ideas
1
Research as Relationship
2
Responses and Ongoing Debates
3
Global Influence and New Movements
Key Quotations
"Decolonization is not a metaphor."
— Widely quoted in Indigenous studies, adapted from Tuck and Yang (2012); Smith has used it in her later work
This famous line actually comes from a 2012 article by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, but Smith has used and endorsed it in her later writing. The point is a sharp one. In recent decades, 'decolonise' has become a popular word. People talk about 'decolonising the curriculum', 'decolonising the mind', 'decolonising diets'. Some of this is useful work. But for Indigenous peoples, decolonisation is not primarily about metaphors and feelings. It is about land. It is about Indigenous peoples getting back the lands taken from them, and regaining their right to govern themselves. Without that material reality, talk of decolonisation can become a way for comfortable people to feel good without changing anything. For advanced students, the quote is a sharp corrective to loose use of the term.
"I think it's important for us, for Māori, for Indigenous peoples, to have our knowledge recognised, and to occupy and create spaces inside the big institutions of knowledge."
— Speech accepting the Rutherford Medal, Royal Society Te Apārangi, 2023
Smith said this on receiving New Zealand's highest scholarly honour. It captures her life's goal. Indigenous knowledge needs recognition. Indigenous peoples also need real spaces inside universities, research institutes, and scholarly bodies. Not just being invited in as guests. Occupying and creating spaces. This is a mature position. It accepts that Western institutions are not going away. It insists that Indigenous peoples can and should change them from inside, while also building their own alternatives. For advanced students, the quote is a good model of how Smith balances sharp critique with long-term practical work. She criticises Western institutions without giving up on being part of them.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Research Skills When teaching students about researcher positionality
How to introduce
Smith writes carefully about being an insider researcher: a Māori scholar studying Māori communities. Discuss her point that insider research has real strengths (language, trust, knowledge) and real challenges (obligations, closeness, expectations). Ask students to identify their own potential positions. If they studied their own community, what would they see that outsiders would miss? What would they miss? This is advanced research training that applies to many careers.
Critical Thinking When studying how ideas and movements spread globally
How to introduce
Smith's 1999 book has influenced Indigenous scholars in Canada, Australia, the United States, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A single book from New Zealand shaped intellectual life on every continent. Ask students: how do ideas travel? What makes one book influential while others are forgotten? What is lost and what is gained when a framework crosses cultures? Smith's career is a useful case study. It shows how a carefully argued work from a small country can become a global intellectual reference point.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Smith rejects Western science completely.

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What to teach instead

She does not. She has been clear that Western science has real value and real achievements. What she rejects is the claim that Western science is the only valid way of knowing the world. She argues it is one knowledge system among several, and that its assumptions should be examined as carefully as any other's. She works inside universities and alongside scientists. Many of her collaborators are Western-trained researchers. Treating her as 'anti-science' misses her actual position, which is more careful and more demanding than total rejection.

Common misconception

Decolonising methodologies is only for researchers studying Indigenous peoples.

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What to teach instead

Her framework applies to many situations. Any research where there is unequal power between researchers and participants can benefit from her questions. Studies of poor communities by wealthy researchers, studies of migrants by citizens, studies of women by male-dominated teams, studies of disabled people by non-disabled researchers: all can draw on her work. She herself has said the principles transfer. Students should not assume her work is only about Māori or only about Indigenous peoples. It is about ethical research more broadly.

Common misconception

Smith's work is mainly activist rather than scholarly.

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What to teach instead

Her activism and her scholarship are linked, but her scholarly contribution is substantial. Decolonizing Methodologies is a carefully argued academic book with detailed historical research and theoretical development. It has been cited hundreds of thousands of times, not because of its politics but because it offers rigorous tools for thinking about research. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, awarded the Rutherford Medal, and holds senior academic positions. Calling her 'just an activist' dismisses serious intellectual work.

Common misconception

Indigenous research methods are the same as qualitative research methods.

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What to teach instead

They overlap but are not the same. Qualitative methods (interviews, observation, ethnography) are Western research techniques. Some Indigenous research uses these tools. But Indigenous methodologies, as Smith develops them, also include things qualitative research usually does not: specific cultural protocols, obligations to ancestors, community ownership of findings, spiritual dimensions, language-based ways of knowing. The difference matters. A Western qualitative study is not automatically Indigenous just because it involves talking to Indigenous people. Indigenous methodology requires deeper change in how research is done.

Intellectual Connections
Develops
Epeli Hauʻofa
Hauʻofa, the Tongan-Fijian thinker, argued for reframing the Pacific as a 'sea of islands' rather than a collection of small, poor states. Smith took a parallel move in research: reframing Indigenous peoples as knowledge-holders rather than objects of study. Both worked to change inherited descriptions that damaged Pacific and Indigenous communities. Both taught and worked in universities while staying rooted in their own peoples. Smith's work explicitly draws on the broader Pacific Indigenous intellectual movement Hauʻofa helped found.
In Dialogue With
Teresia Teaiwa
Teaiwa, the I-Kiribati and African American Pacific scholar, was a close intellectual contemporary of Smith. Both worked in New Zealand universities. Both helped build Pacific and Indigenous studies as serious academic fields. Both insisted that local knowledge and global theory could work together. Teaiwa died young in 2017; Smith has continued to build the tradition they helped shape together. Reading them together gives students the fullest picture of modern Pacific and Indigenous scholarship in Aotearoa.
Develops
Frantz Fanon
Fanon, writing in the 1950s and 1960s, analysed the psychological damage colonialism did to colonised peoples. Smith extended his work into the specific world of academic research and knowledge. Where Fanon wrote about broader colonial damage, Smith focused on how research itself has been part of that damage and how it can be changed. Both thinkers insist that decolonisation requires more than political independence. It requires changing how knowledge is produced.
Complements
V. Y. Mudimbe
Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa (1988) showed how European writing constructed 'Africa' as an object of knowledge. Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) showed how Western research constructed Indigenous peoples as objects of study. The two books do similar work for different regions. Both argue that changing the categories is as important as changing the politics. Both have become foundational texts in their fields. Reading them together deepens both.
In Dialogue With
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer, the Potawatomi scientist and writer, works in a related tradition. She combines Western ecology with Indigenous knowledge of plants and land. Smith works in research methodology more broadly. Both insist that Indigenous knowledge is real knowledge and that Western science should listen. Both have reached wide audiences beyond universities. Reading them together gives students a feel for Indigenous intellectual work across different fields (research methodology and ecology) and different nations (Māori and Potawatomi).
Influenced
Patricia Hill Collins
Collins, the American Black feminist sociologist, developed the idea that researchers' social positions shape their knowledge. Smith's focus on positionality in Indigenous research draws on this broader tradition. Both thinkers argue that the standpoint of the researcher matters. Both challenge the myth of neutral, view-from-nowhere research. Collins's matrix of domination and Smith's decolonising methodologies work on related problems from different angles. Together they represent a major shift in how social science thinks about the researcher's role.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, the AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples publishes ongoing scholarship in the tradition Smith helped found. The International Handbook of Indigenous Methodologies contains advanced discussions. For the broader field, Sandy Grande's Red Pedagogy, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's 2012 essay 'Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor', and the work of scholars like Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua and Brendan Hokowhitu develop related themes. Smith's own later writings on Indigenous data sovereignty and health research show how her framework continues to evolve.