Pakeha "paralysis": cultural safety for those researching the general population of aotearoa.

Abstract

The emergence and dominance of the Maori-centred research paradigm is leaving Pakeha researchers out in the cold. "Pakeha paralysis" draws on my experiences as author, teacher and university ethics committee member to account for the reasons why so many Pakeha postgraduate students are caught in a state of paralysis, deliberately excluding Maori from their general population research samples. While supposedly addressing cultural concerns, through avoiding cultures not their own, these Pakeha researchers fail to fulfil Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities. This paper offers explanations of why this paralysis developed, and how it has been codified into health and tertiary ethics guidelines and in university teaching. The paper ends by offering solutions to work through this cultural web by honouring the Treaty of Waitangi while promoting cultural safety for Pakeha researching New Zealand society.

**********

TALES FROM THE FIELD (2)

The ethnographer Van Maanen (1988) suggests retelling tales from the field as a means of stating a research problem while making for a dramatic beginning. All three tales at the start of this paper focus on postgraduate student research in New Zealand universities. Starting in this way allows for later generalisation to include all research involving Pakeha researchers in New Zealand. For the moment the research problem is centred on postgraduate students attempting to research the New Zealand general population. The subject matter stems from my role as a deputy chair of a university ethics committee. This role has me field many telephone calls from students and researchers seeking advice on how to best navigate an ethics committee application.

Recently a Pakeha postgraduate student called me to query the cultural concerns section of an ethics application for a university's ethics committee. I asked the student to outline her research and she proudly said her doctorate examined both clients' and workers' experiences of work culture in three banks: the ASB, the BNZ and the new Kiwibank. She went on to say that she believed that there were no cultural issues given that she did not plan to specifically target Maori.

What struck me most about this query was how she seemingly remained oblivious to the fact that her focus compared the cultures of clients and workers across three banks. The student said she planned to write "not applicable" in the cultural concerns section of the ethics committee application. She asked me if I thought an ethics committee would have a problem with that. It would seem that given that she planned not to include Maori in the study, she thought her study crossed no cultural boundaries. The irony, of course, was that the doctorate substantively focused on cultural boundaries. In her thinking, "culture" meant "Maori". This paper explores the source of this assumption and how it has been codified in ethical practice in New Zealand by teachers, authors and institutional ethics committees.

A second tale stems from my chairing a "mock ethics" committee for postgraduate students at a distant university. During the day, 12 postgraduate students orally presented their written research proposals, outlining their projects' ethical considerations. As I listened to these applications I was struck by the reluctance of these Pakeha students to research Maori: all researchers sought only Pakeha informants, "snowballed" among their friends and workmates. To be more explicit, the Pakeha postgraduate students had actively excluded Maori. When asked for a personal explanation for this exclusion, the students collectively reported they had been taught by their teachers to exclude Maori. As Pakeha they had learned that they had no place researching Maori. At no time had they been taught how to consider cross-cultural research.

What are the ethical considerations of this exclusion of Maori by these 12 students? Firstly, their proposals were ethical in all other respects: they did not contradict core ethical principles of informed consent, voluntary participation, deceit or conflict of interest. On the contrary the proposals on these measures were exemplary. The ethical principle that they violated was harm. (3)

Harm as an ethical principle has many guises. Harm can occur to the subject, the researcher or the institution. In Herbert Green's "Unfortunate Experiment", eight women died (Coney 1989). Harm may also occur to the unsuspecting researcher. Interviewing a prisoner alone can bring harm. Equally what an informant says about a topic (for example, grief), may harm the researcher. A third type of harm can arise for an institution. Again, to cite the "unfortunate experiment", Auckland University and National Women's Hospital were harmed in that they were no longer trusted to guarantee good practice (Coney 1989). In the wake of the Cartwright Commission, institutional ethics committees in New Zealand operate as risk managers, both for themselves and for the researchers who investigate under their masthead (Casey 2001:131). Thus, ethics committees have come to manage the risk involved in cultural sensitivity to such an extent that universities and health ethics committees may unwittingly harm the subjects they seek to protect. The irony of these tales from the field is that they document how protecting Maori from harm may in fact be harmful in terms of Treaty responsibilities.

The third tale from the field underlines this irony. The tale involves a postgraduate student's thesis. It was this tale that prompted me to place my head above the parapet and to expose these ethical ironies. The student's supervisor relayed the following to me. He said his student wanted to generate a research sample, blind, via both an advertisement in a local newspaper and pinned on supermarket community notice boards. I told the supervisor I saw no issue with this practice. However, in addition, the supervisor said the student held a firm belief that because he was Pakeha, the university's ethics committee would require him to exclude all Maori from his research sample. The supervisor had not questioned the student's reasoning and simply sought my advice on how to achieve this end.

There are some obvious differences between this research design and the small-scale snowballed research projects presented in the mock orals scenario outlined above. In any newspaper/supermarket advertisement the researcher does not know who will read the advertisement and who will respond. The sample size depends on how interesting the potential informants think the research sounds. This response could easily be 100 potential informants or more, none of whom the researcher knows in advance. This student's thesis thus places ethics beyond the comfort zone of friends and workmates, potentially placing the institution at risk.

How should the student frame the advertisement? "Informants wanted for master's thesis research project"? This could attract possible subjects, but is this ethical in this case? If this research matches the conditions of the mock oral group above where Maori are excluded, then "Informants wanted for master's thesis research project" is misleading. A more honest statement would be "Pakeha informants wanted for master's thesis research project". An even more candid announcement would be "Maori need not apply". The latter places the institution at risk.

The fact that this explicit advertisement excluding Maori has not developed in the public arena should not be reason for complacency. These explicit advertisements can and are easily subverted by a sleight of hand on any researcher's part. The advertisement may read "Informants wanted for master's thesis research project" which prospective informants may read and respond to. The sleight-of-hand exclusion occurs within a preliminary interview, where routine demographic details are collected. When Maori self-identify themselves, some postgraduate students feel compelled to follow what they have been taught and politely exclude Maori from their sample. This procedure is simple and, according to this student's supervisor, what the ethics committee supposedly wants.

What is the harm within this advertisement or sleight of hand? And who is harmed? Is it the subject, the researcher or the institution? This paper suggests this problem is an institutional dilemma. For some perverse reason university lecturers and institutional ethics committees (such as the Health Research Council, see below) are promoting culturally sensitive research that violates the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi. On the one hand these institutions seem to be mandating that Pakeha researchers do not have the cultural sensitivity to conduct cross-cultural research. On the other hand, this exclusion of Maori does not promote Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities, neither promoting partnership in research nor giving Maori the right to benefit from a fair share in what is ultimately state-funded (tertiary) research.

These three tales from the field are sufficiently altered to disguise everything but the truth. Although most examples are subterranean, in classrooms and in personal telephone conversations from where I sat as a deputy chair of an ethics committee, a member of an informal "mock ethics" committee, as a writer in the research ethics field, as a teacher of research methods, as a thesis supervisor and as an active researcher, these problems are just over the horizon. This paper may represent the dawn of new ways of thinking through the Pakeha paralysis.

This three-part paper explores how we as researchers, teachers and ethics committee members arrived at this situation and what steps can be taken to turn it around. How can we best answer students' queries when they ask us how "best" to get around this cultural concerns question? Many Pakeha colleagues in New Zealand universities are either oblivious to the complexity of these issues or they are paralysed, recognising it as a political minefield.

A logical first step in the third example would be to focus on the student and to bring him or her before the ethics committee for a "good chat" about cultural concerns. While possibly useful, the problem is wider than one person. Students can only have reached this exclusionary position if those teaching them parrot, without questioning, how the dominance of the Maori-centred research paradigm governs research practice in New Zealand. Parts One and Two of this paper explore the emergence of this Maori-centred research paradigm. This paper does not attempt to critique the Maori-centred research paradigm, but it will explore its soporific effects on Pakeha researchers.

Part One looks at past and recent attempts by Pakeha to research Maori. This history documents the impact of this research on Maori, leading to the rationale for Pakeha exclusion from Maori-centred research. Rather than re-litigating these debates, this short history seeks to explain how this rejection of research "on" Maori created the dominant Maori-centred research paradigm and how it eventually came to affect the framing of how institutional ethics committees adjudicate cultural concerns.

Part Two shifts the focus away from Maori-centred research to explore the ethical issues involved when postgraduate researchers study the general population of New Zealand. What ethical issues are raised when Pakeha researchers come across both Maori and other cultures, not their own, in the general population? Part Two thus explores a commonplace scenario that any supervisor or ethics committee member is likely to confront when a postgraduate student (or applicant) wants to conduct a survey within New Zealand. Part Two suggests that the advice available for Pakeha researchers, some of which this author wrote or edited, is inadequate. This literature actively discourages Pakeha from researching Maori in the general population.

Part Three rethinks ways to address the issue of cultural concerns for researchers studying the New Zealand general population. The focus of the solution is to acknowledge that this problem is not Maori-centred research but a Pakeha problem. It is Pakeha who are paralysed here: unwilling or unable to think through this political minefield. The reluctance to address these issues is similar to those Pakeha who shied away from the front-page debates involving cultural safety in the 1990s. Yet in Part Three I use those debates to work through ways to resolve the Pakeha paralysis. No one is likely to suggest that in New Zealand only Maori nurses can nurse Maori patients. Nor should the arguments be made that Pakeha researchers cannot research Maori when they appear as subjects, respondents or informants in their samples of the general population. Rather than exclusion of Maori, this paper suggests education and a cultural safety for researchers. Cultural safety has the potential to recognise and dissolve the Pakeha paralysis.

PART ONE: ESTABLISHING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM

Pakeha social science students are warned off contemplating researching Maori in second-year research methods courses, and this message is sustained in postgraduate education. In year-two courses undergraduates are first exposed to the short history of Pakeha research "on" Maori. The story goes that in the nineteenth century Governor George Grey, Percy Smith, Elsdon Best and Augustus Hamilton abused their roles as researchers.

   These early purveyors of Maori intellectual knowledge, custom and
   society often combined their roles as colonial administrators,
   officials and adjudicators with those of cultural philanthropist
   and researcher intent on recording for posterity the last vestiges
   of a dying race. (Jahnke and Taiapa 1999:40)

The authors claim the actions of Grey et al. were systematically exploitative, for example:

   [Hamilton] openly sketched aspects of local pah, exploited chiefs,
   photographed at will, stole artefacts and disturbed and collected
   human remains. (Jahnke and Taiapa 1999:40)

The results of this nineteenth century- research "on" Maori skewed Maori attitudes to research. Cram (2001:50) sums this up as "We just got a little side-tracked by non-Maori researchers' notions that we were deficient when they examined us through their western gaze."

One hundred-odd years later during the Maori renaissance of the 1970s Maori critiques of Pakeha-centred research on Maori once more came to a head. Here, well intentioned Pakeha researchers were run out of Maoridom. Notable Pakeha researchers like historian Michael King and anthropologist Joan Metge, to name two, were dislodged from entrenched positions as scholars of Maori. Each had acquired the Maori language and had attempted to grasp the culture. Of these Pakeha researchers King bore the brunt of the criticism.

In Maori research King had been the ground breaker, highly successful and public. King's research and writing in the 1970s and 1980s took Pakeha New Zealanders into the rich, diverse, and mainly unknown world of Maori culture in a way no one else--Maori or Pakeha--had done before (Keene 1999). He achieved this, Milne (1999) reports, by winning:

   the confidence of elderly Maori kuias to write Moko--Maori
   Tattooing in the Twentieth Century. He followed it up with a
   biography of Te Puea Herangi, published in 1977, and Maori--a
   Photographic and Social History.

King's initial success brought more invitations to research and document Maori, and in 1983 he published a biography of Dame Whina Cooper, to mixed reviews (Milne 1999). This was the beginning of the backlash against King and other Pakeha researchers, evoking sentiments held about previous generations of Pakeha researchers. Atareta Poananga claimed King was "an academic raider ... who has gone out to make his reputation out of Maori things, got all the credit he wants for it, and then retreated back into his white world" (Milne 1999). Mana Motuhake president Albie Tahana described King as "a bloody Pakeha who's too arrogant to know he's overstepped the mark" (Milne 1999). King also engendered animosity within academic circles. Ritchie (1999) interpreted the response to King in the sense that he had perpetrated an intensive theft of cultural property. The backlash against King was a restatement of a general understanding that Maori had not been well served by Pakeha researchers then or in the past. The outcome of these statements gave impetus to a more concerted effort to establish Maori-centred research.

Maori-centred research "deliberately places Maori people and Maori experience at the centre of the research activity" (A. Dune 1992 quoted in Jahnke and Taiapa 1999:43), taking account of Maori culture, knowledge, values, realities and needs. A feature of this research is the assumption that it should benefit Maori. Moreover, research needs to be strategic to produce positive outcomes to endorse the Treaty of Waitangi. Research also needs to be based on Maori kaupapa, which A. Dune (1992 quoted in Jahnke and Taiapa 1999:49) describes as:

   An in-depth understanding of Maori values, attitudes and mores
   necessary for a successful outcome, as is the probability of an
   understanding and willingness to abide by a Maori system of ethics
   and accountability.

Linda Smith envisages kaupapa Maori research (Jahnke and Taiapa 2001:45) where Maori maintain conceptual design, methodological and interpretative control. In other words, "research by Maori for Maori with Maori" (Smith 1995).

In sum there is little room for independent Pakeha research in this Maori-centred research paradigm. If and when Pakeha are involved, they act under strict guidelines (Bishop and Glynn 1992) supporting a bicultural approach to researching Maori. Bishop and Glynn insist that there is a place for non-Maori researchers and their expertise, but only where the methodology is empowering. They suggest a collaborative and interactive approach whereby the power and control of the research process remain with the whanau and that the researchers (Maori or Pakeha) are accountable to them.

However, these conditions do not help any of the sole Pakeha postgraduate researchers in the three tales from the field above. Each of them was a sole researcher, as they must be to meet institutional requirements to produce independent research for their qualification. Also, their research lies outside the scope of Maori-centred research given their goal was to research in the general population.

PART TWO: TEACHING EXCLUSION

Imagine a social science thesis student wanting to use a survey methodology to study stress in the workplace. The key variables might be age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, absenteeism, self-perceived health, marital status and a composite scale measuring indices of workplace stress. In this hypothetical study the sample size is 600 and the researcher has sought the assistance of the PPTA (Post Primary Teachers Association) to help send the anonymous survey to a random sample of its members. In fact the PPTA has promised to send out the 15-page questionnaire with the bi-annual union newsletter. What are the ethical issues here? Let us assume that the researcher fulfils requirements for informed consent, voluntary participation and anonymity. As a supervisor or ethics committee member how would you assess the research's cultural concerns and what suggestions would you give? Suggesting further reading may not be an option: extant literature on researching Aotearoa does not address this issue. There the focus is more on the exclusion of Pakeha researchers rather than their inclusion.

A close reading of tertiary and health ethics committees guidelines and published research methods text books demonstrates that a great deal is discussed in terms of the dominant Maori-centred research paradigm, but little is mentioned about how to research Maori who appear in the general population. I begin this critical summary of extant literature with three books that I have been involved with in the past few years, before examining the Health Research Council's guidelines on research involving Maori.

In Starting Fieldwork: An Introduction to Qualitative Research in New Zealand, co-authored by Tolich and Davidson, we danced about inter-ethnic research completely paralysed by the dominant Maori-centred research paradigm. We gave disclaimers that we were only two Pakeha authors and what did we know about the Maori "ways of knowing"? We managed to set an exclusive position for Pakeha researchers as:

   Aside from the question of whether non-Maori can ever understand
   the Maori world in its own terms, there is a serious question about
   whether they even have the right to attempt to.

Unfortunately, so passionate was I to make this point that the italics were in the original. Any Pakeha researcher reading this book would deduce that only Maori can study Maori, end of story.

The status of Maori-centred research is not disputed here. What is revisionist is the suggestion that some workable boundaries need to be established. Under what conditions can Pakeha study the general population of New Zealand when a random sample of that population is likely to generate 13% Maori? Perhaps these questions can only be asked now that I have written or edited three research methods texts and I have the confidence or nerve to test boundaries. But there are no existing boundaries for Pakeha researchers.

The other two research methods textbooks with which I was involved (Davidson and Tolich 1999, Tolich 200 lb) had outstanding chapters focusing on Maori-centred research by Jahnke and Taiapa (1999), "Maori research", and Cram, "The validity and integrity of Maori research" (2001), respectively. I wish to be absolutely clear that I am in no way criticising these chapters in my comments here. However, as editor I need to take overall responsibility of the scope of these books, and at the time of their publication I had not yet worked through my own paralysis. I did not, at that time, raise the issue of who can study Maori as part of the general population, and the chapters promoting the Maori-centred paradigm give sound reasons for why Pakeha should desist from focusing their research on Maori.

Much of Jahnke and Taiapa's chapter has been outlined in Part One of this paper. Beyond documenting the historical mistrust of Pakeha researching Maori their chapter substantively records two key assumptions: the existence of a distinctive Maori way of organising knowledge, Maoriuranga Maori, and the significance of Maori-centred research. In answering their own question, "Who should do the research?" Jahnke and Taiapa (1999, 2001) are unequivocal in saying, "Maori themselves should be involved in the design, delivery, management and monitoring of the research process."

Cram (2001:38) takes a similar perspective to Jahnke and Taiapa, stating that she wrote this research ethics chapter for Maori; however, she does add that non-Maori could learn from her chapter:

   My intention in this chapter is to speak mainly to a Maori
   audience in the belief that doing so will encourage useful and
   respectful research by Maori, for Maori.... However, as in other
   areas, what is good for Maori is often good for people in general
   so perhaps there is something here for all.

I have no criticism with either of these chapters in what they say. If there is a criticism, it is of myself as editor of Research Ethics for Aotearoa New Zealand for not thinking through the ramifications of who may study Maori. However, I am not alone. The Health Research Council also gives little sound advice for Pakeha researching Maori when Maori have a one in eight chance of turning up in any random research sample generated in the New Zealand population.

The source of the Health Research Council's problem lies first in its broad terminology used to define Maori, and second in the implications of this definition for research involving Maori. At no time does the Health Research Council consider that Maori may turn up in a research sample unannounced and unconsulted. In essence these Health Research Council guidelines embody the Maori-centred research paradigm.

The Health Research Council provides two sets of ethical guidelines on their website. (4) The first are general guidelines for health researchers, and the second are specific guidelines for health research involving Maori. In what follows I review these two sets of guidelines, demonstrating both their many strengths and how their all-encompassing definition of Maori as "any Maori participant" prevents Pakeha researchers from fulfilling their obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi. The review of these guidelines begins with a restatement of the Treaty of Waitangi. Other issues reviewed are the prerequisite consultation with Maori research subjects and the definition of who is Maori. The goal of this review is to examine what ethical considerations the Health Research Council guidelines suggest for the student conducting the quasi-medical research, stress in the workplace. In that study, statistically speaking, there is a likelihood that one or more Maori will have the opportunity to opt into their study.

The Treaty of Waitangi obligations are well set out in section 3.2 of the Health Research Council guidelines for researchers on health involving Maori. There, a clear justification is given for why research should both include Maori and benefit Maori. The guidelines state:

   Article Two articulates the retention of Maori control (tino
   rangatiratanga) over Maori resources, including people. Article
   Three provides a right to a fair share of society's benefits.
   Maori health has been a consideration with the Treaty since its
   initial drafting in 1840 [see Durie 1994:83-84].

   For health research Article Two results in the recognition that
   iwi and haps have an authority over their peoples' involvement in
   research. Article Three generates an expectation for both an
   equivalent state of health between Maori and Pakeha, and an
   equitable share of the benefits of any Crown expenditure.

   The continuing disparities in standards of health between Maori
   and non-Maoriproduce a strong argument under Article Three for
   significant health research resources to be directed at
   resolving Maori health issues. High-quality research is a key
   component in Maori health development, as it is essential that
   initiatives to resolve Maori health issues are based on a
   foundation of high-quality information.

There is no problem with the Health Research Council's explicit restatement of the Treaty of Waitangi. (5) The problem lies in other assumptions within the Health Research Council's guidelines that undermine their commitment to endorsing the Treaty of Waitangi. Problems arise for Pakeha researchers within the definition of Maori given in the guidelines on consultation with Maori.

   Consultation is a key component in the development of research on
   a Maori health issue and/or involving Maori as participants. In
   the past there have been many instances of misunderstanding
   resulting from differences in opinions as to what constitutes
   consultation [my emphasis].

Defining "Maori as participants" is confusing for Pakeha and needs clarification if Pakeha are to move beyond this paralysis. Any Pakeha researcher reading this definition of "Maori as participants" would first assume that every single Maori in the New Zealand population is considered by the Health Research Council to be a Maori who needs to be consulted prior to research taking place. This is not the case.

The more general Health Research Council ethics guidelines do not clarify this definition of who is Maori for research purposes. In section 6.3.3, "Health Research Council? B Cultural Sensitivity", the notion of Maori tangata whenua status collides with the Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities for Pakeha researchers both to include Maori and to consult with them prior to research taking place. Pakeha researchers using these Health Research Council guidelines are caught in a Catch-22. Any researcher encountering tangata whenua should consult the Health Research Council guidelines about research involving Maori. Yet when consulted these guidelines do not actively encourage Pakeha researching Maori.

Like the three books mentioned above, at no time does the Health Research Council discuss how a researcher studying the New Zealand general population should deal with a Maori person, or if they have the right to. "Maori as participant" seems to mean that any Maori needs to be treated as if iwi were being studied. This omission in the three texts and these guidelines both represents and contributes to Pakeha paralysis and explains why so many postgraduate social science students are scared off from even considering including Maori in their samples.

Focusing on the tangata whenua status of all Maori without a contextual clarification is problematic. It follows that any research that potentially involves a Maori participant, such as the hypothetical workplace stress study above, in effect, is treated as Maori-centred research. This is both unreasonable and runs counter to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The distinction being made here is between Maori-centred research on the one hand, and the more generic research on the other. In generic research, any participant from the general population may read an advertisement about research and want to opt into the study. Without such a distinction being made in ethics guidelines, Pakeha paralysis will continue, and Pakeha students will continue to exclude Maori from research samples and the benefits of their research. This distinction, if instigated, allows Pakeha researchers (like the student studying banking cultures in the first of my "tales from the field" at the beginning of this paper) to make an ethics committee application for a generic study of the New Zealand population by addressing a wider definition of culture than Maori culture. To those ends education via cultural safety provides a potential solution to Pakeha paralysis.

PART THREE: NURSING PARALYSIS

The Nursing Council of New Zealand (1996) Guidelines for Cultural Safety in Nursing and Midwifery Education provides a ready solution to the problem posed in this paper regarding the conditions under which Pakeha researchers can include Maori in their research sample.

Since its inception in the early 1990s, nursing programmes' cultural safety issues have not been far from the news headlines. Ina sense the nursing classrooms in New Zealand polytechnics became an arena for the discussion of contemporary race relations in Aotearoa. Issues of boundaries between things Maori and non-Maori were negotiated in a spirited way. Maori nursing staff, Maori students and Maori studies departments held that cultural safety was in their realm of expertise. Non-Maori teachers were careful not to intrude on Maori intellectual property and the cultural integrity of Maori teachers (Nursing Council of New Zealand 1996:26). In a sense, Pakeha nursing staff had to contend with their own paralysis.

These issues of ownership of cultural safety courses and their content have since been worked through in two separate ways, both of which are at the heart of this paper. First, the emphasis of cultural safety has been on the Treaty of Waitangi, as is the goal of this paper. Second, cultural safety sets up an opportunity for enlightenment through education, championing a route to inclusion (and away from exclusion) of Maori by Pakeha researchers.

Rather than reinvent the wheel and write a new cultural safety protocol for Pakeha researchers it seems more sensible to work from the Nursing Council of New Zealand Guidelines for Cultural Safety. (This can be achieved by replacing the term "nurse" with "researcher" and "nursing" with "research".) Both nursing and research cultural safety can be conceived as a two-way relationship:

   [Cultural safety is] the effective nursing [research] of a person/
   family from another culture by a nurse [researcher] who has
   undertaken a process of reflection on own cultural identity and
   recognises the impact of the nurse's [researcher's] culture on own
   nursing practice [research methods].

The focus of this definition is not so much on learning another culture but on nurses' self-reflection on their own culture and examining the experience of the recipient of the care. This is a two-part process involving delivery and outcomes that parallels the way research is conducted. The assumption of the two-part set of expectations is that a nurse who understands his or her culture and the theory of power relations can be culturally safe in any human context.

How the Nursing Council seeks to achieve this two-way process is set out within three overlapping goals for cultural safety education (the text in brackets highlights how this applies to research ethics). Nursing students:

* examine their own realities and attitudes they bring to each new person they encounter in their practice [research encounter]

* evaluate the impact that historical, political and social processes have on the health of all people [in terms of the research topic]

* demonstrate flexibility in their relationships with people who are different from themselves.

The utility of the cultural safety guidelines is also in the breadth of definition the Nursing Council gives to culture. Their guidelines go beyond ethnic difference to encompass cultural diversity, and differing sexual orientation and age. This diversity fits well with the hypothetical multi-variable "work stress" scenario outlined in this paper.

DISCUSSION: THE POLITICS OF ETHICS

The research question put forward in this paper is quite specific. Are there ethical conditions under which Pakeha social science postgraduate students can include Maori in their sample when the research sample is randomly generated and statistically likely to include 13% Maori? Do these students have the right to include these Maori within the sample when no consultation has been entered into? Due to Pakeha paralysis the current answer to both questions is "No": Pakeha researchers are advised to exclude Maori on the basis of not having the cultural sensitivity to research Maori.

Evidence presented in this paper concludes that there is genuine confusion among students, their supervisors, those that teach research methods and write research methods textbooks. The confusion also permeates to those who sit on institutional ethics committees, including the Health Research Council's ethics guidelines. The confusion stems from, on the one hand, a phenomenon I refer to as Pakeha paralysis: Pakeha inability to distinguish between their role in Maori-centred research and their role in research in a New Zealand society, which involves Maori among other ethnic groups. On the other hand is the ascendancy of Maori-centred research as a dominant research paradigm, most notably in health research. The outcome of this ascendency is the same: Pakeha seem unable to fully participate in researching the New Zealand population and to have their research fulfil their obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.

How can this exclusion of Maori and the active non-endorsement of the Treaty of Waitangi by these student researchers be turned around? Cultural safety provides a home-grown remedy to this problem, facilitating Pakeha to study Maori and to endorse the Treaty of Waitangi. For this to occur the dominant Maori-centred research paradigm needs to recognise this Pakeha problem so that Pakeha can establish their boundaries and be given space to rest their feet.

(1) Acknowledgements

The term "Pakeha paralysis" arose in a conversation with Ephra Garrett. In subsequent conversations she remarked how the "paralysis" had been good for Pakeha but added that now it was time to move on. This paper is written in this spirit. An earlier draft of this paper was presented to the Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand Annual Conference at Palmerston North, November, 2001.

Correspondence

Martin Tolich, School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Massey University, Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North.

(2) All references and examples (i.e. Kiwibank) are suitably changed to protect the identity of these researchers.

(3) The fact that most, if not all, of the research outcomes produced by these 12 students are unlikely to be published is irrelevant to the wider debate about harm. Little postgraduate research ends in publication in the public domain.

(4) www.hrc.govt.nz

(5) There is a problem given that not all Maori identify along hapu or iwi lines.

REFERENCES

Bishop R. and T. Glynn (1992) "He kanohi kitea: conducting and evaluating educational research' New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies 27(2): 125-135.

Casey, Catherine (2001) "Ethics committees, institutions and organizations: subjectivity, consent and risk" in Martin Tolich (ed.) Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand Longman, Auckland.

Committee of Inquiry into Allegations Conceming the Treatment of Cervical Cancer at National Women's Hospital and Into Other Matters (CCI, "Cartwright Commission") (1988) The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Allegations Concerning the Treatment of Cervical Cancer at National Women's Hospital and into Other Matters, Auckland.

Coney, S. (1989), The Unfortunate Experiment: the Full Story Behind the Inquiry into Cervical Cancer Treatment, Penguin, Auckland.

Coney, S. and Phillida Bunkle (1987) "An Unfortunate Experiment at National Women's Hospital" Metro, (June):46-65.

Cram, F. (1997) "Developing partnerships in research: Pakeha researchers and Maori research" Sites, 35:44-63.

Cram, Fiona (2001) "Rangahau Maori: tona tika, tona pono: the validity and integrity of Maori research" in Martin Tolich (ed.) Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Davidson, Carl and Martin Tolich (eds.) (1999) Social Science Research in New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Durie, Arohia (1992) "Whaia te ara tika: research methodologies and Maori".

Durie, Mason (1994) "Kaupapa hauroa Maori: polices for Maori health" Proceedings of the Hui Ara Ahu Whakamua, Te Puni Kokiri, Wellington.

Health Research Council (2001) Guidelines for Researchers on Health Research, http:// www.hrc.govt.nz

Health Research Council (2001) Guidelines for Researchers on Health Research Involving Maori, http://www.hrc.govt.nz/Maoguide.htm

Jahnke, Huia and Julia Taiapa (1999) "Maori research" in Carl Davidson and Martin Tolich (eds.) Social Science Research in New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Keene, Howard (1999)"More thoughts from a `white native'" The Press, Christchurch, 10 May.

Massey University (2000) Code of Ethical Conduct for Teaching and Research Involving Human Subjects (revised edition), Massey University, Palmerston North.

Matheson, Claire (1989) Fate Cries Enough, Sceptre, Auckland.

Milne, Jonathan (1999) "The rise and rights of white natives" The Dominion, 12 May. Nursing Council of New Zealand (1996) Guidelines for Cultural Safety in Nursing and Midwifery Education, Nursing Council of New Zealand, Wellington.

Ramsden, Irihapeti (1988) Kawa Whakaruruhau--Cultural Safety in Nursing Education in Aotearoa, the Hui Waimanawa, Otautahi, 1988, Hui Piri Ki Nga Tangaroa, Manawatu, 1989, Hui Raranga Patai, Te Whanganui a Tara, 1990, Ministry' of Education, Wellington.

Ritchie, James (1999) "Pakeha historian puts his life in perspective" Waikato Times, Hamilton, 22 May.

Rotondo, Margaret (1996) Ethics in Research on Human Subjects in the University Setting, M. Phil. thesis, University of Auckland.

Smith, Linda (1995) "Re-centenng kaupapa Maori research" paper presented at Te Matawhanui conference, Massey University, Palmerston North.

Smith, Linda (1998) Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books, New York.

Teanki, C. and P. Spoonley with N. Tomoana (1992) Te Whakapakari te Mana Tangat: The Politics and Process of Research for Maori, Department of Sociology, Massey University.

Te Awekotuku, N. (1991) He Tikanga Whakaaro: Research Ethics in the Maori Community, Manatu Maori, Wellington.

Tolich, Martin (2001a) "Beyond an unfortunate experiment: ethics for small town New Zealand" in Martin Tolich (ed.) Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Tolich, Martin (ed.) (2001b) Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Tolich, Martin (2001 c) "Self-administered questionnaires: the ethics of snail mail vs. e-mail" in Martin Tolich (ed.) Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand, Longman, Auckland.

Tolich, Martin and Carl Davidson (1999) "Observing ethics: ethnography beyond Cartwright" New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 14(1):61-84.

Tolich, Martin and Carl Davidson (1998) Starting Fieldwork: an introduction to Qualitative Research in New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Auckland.

University of Auckland Human Subjects Ethics Committee (1999) "Guidelines for Applicants" The University of Auckland.

Van Maanen, John (1988) Tales of the Field, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Martin Tolich (1)
Massey University
Palmerston North