Kōrero Tahi in a cultural anthropology classroom in Aotearoa New Zealand

In this paper I reflect on my efforts to create an educational common in a cultural anthropology course through kōrero tahi, a procedure for managing group discussions as described by Pākehā anthropologist Dame Joan Metge (2001). Kōrero tahi, a Māori phrase that Metge translates as “talking together, the opposite of talking past each other” (2001: 6), offers a framework for commoning grounded in Māori values and inspired by the vision of partnership implicit in Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand. This seemed ideal for a new course I was to teach at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, ‘Anthropology, Education, and Social Change,’ which was open to undegraduate students from a variety of backgrounds and academic disciplines. In this paper I discuss how we used kōrero tahi to attend to our classroom and the process of learning and teaching anthropology together.