Pounamu Jade Aikman Wins Fulbright Award

Pounamu Jade Aikman, who finished his PhD on racism and police violence against Ngāi Tūhoe, is this year’s recipient of the Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award and will spend five months at Harvard University, where he will be based in its history department, Mandy Te writes for Stuff.

Building on his research, Aikman (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tainui, Ngāi te Rangi, Ngāti Awa) will head to the United States at the end of September where he will work on a comparative study of indigenous experiences there and in New Zealand, Te reports.

While his focus in a New Zealand context was on police and state violence, Aikman would be looking at how corporations in the United States tried to quell indigenous protest over land.

“Racism is a central process and includes the impact of land dispossession on indigenous peoples, their wellbeing and existence,” Aikman, 31, says.

The annual Fulbright-Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga Scholar Award is valued at up to US$37,500, roughly NZD$53,145, for three to five months of teaching and/or research at institutions in the United States.

Original article by Mandy Te, Stuff, July 6, 2021.