Bound together, yet separated by common waters. Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a guide to Design Education

The School of Design Innovation, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, Aotearoa, New Zealand is guided by The Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in which Māori and Pākehā (white New Zealanders) and tauiwi (other foreigners) are not blended by cooperation into common-ness but acknowledged as distinctive and equal entities. Committed to this, we have undertaken to shift our design pedagogy, away from the outmoded Euro-Anglo-American paradigms and hierarchies. We seek to acknowledge the more holistic understandings of people, place and space, offered to us from within Māori and Pasifika ways of being. These worldviews demonstrate more than co-operation and equity, but the intangible yet tangible tensions of commonality and contrast. When rooted in values (tikanga) the guiding principles of equality, cooperation, and self-determination can be more fully articulated as akoranga, the fluidity and longevity of reciprocity, manaakitanga care, and kaitiakitanga, responsibility ‘to’ not for people and place.