Wally Penetito. What's Māori about Māori Education? The Struggle
for a Meaningful Context. Wellington: Victoria University Press,
2010. 320 pp. $30.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-86473-614-7. Reviewed
by Christopher J. Frey (Bowling Green State University)
Published on H-Education (December, 2011) Commissioned by
Jonathan Anuik Wally Penetito’s What’s Māori about Māori
Education? is a compelling, dense study of the recent history of
schooling and education policy for and by the Indigenous Māori
in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book’s central aim is to illuminate
how the state has been able to constitute Māori subjects within
the confines of an education system designed for New Zealanders
of European descent, or Pākehā. To do this, he analyzes four
“mediating structures”: education reports, formal consultations,
traditional meeting houses on university campuses (marae), and
community-based schooling (kaupapa Māori) that have structured
Māori schooling over the past five decades (p. 15). Penetito is
less interested in the