Linda Tuhiwai Smith

In 2021, Smith joined Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi as Distinguished Professor.

In September 2020 the hashtag #BecauseOfLindaTuhiwaiSmith went viral when Smith was one of a group of academics who wrote an open letter to the Ministry of Education on racism in education and news that her contract would not be renewed. A report commissioned by the University of Waikato into claims in the letter found that the institution is structurally discriminatory against Māori but did not support other claims in the letter.

In November 2016 she was appointed a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. In the same year she retired Pro Vice Chancellor Māori and took a short-term contract as Professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies in the newly formed Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies.

In the 2013 New Year Honours, Smith was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and education. In 2017, Smith was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.

Smith is the author of Decolonizing Methodologies (Zed Books, 1999 and 2012), a critical analysis of the role of Western scholarly research played in the process of colonization of indigenous cultures. This work is considered a major contribution to research methods in social justice research.

Smith earned her BA, MA (hons), and PhD degrees at the University of Auckland. Her 1996 thesis was titled Ngā aho o te kakahu matauranga: the multiple layers of struggle by Maori in education. She was a member of the Māori political group Ngā Tamatoa while a university student.

In the 1970s, Smith was a founding member of the radical group Ngā Tamatoa. She was radicalized by texts by Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon. Her role in Ngā Tamatoa was to communicate with Maori people about the Treaty of Waitangi. Smith saw education as the most important part the Maori struggle for freedom.

Linda Tuhiwai Te Rina Smith CNZM (née Mead; born 1950) was a professor of indigenous education at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand and is now Distinguished Professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. The daughter of Sidney Moko Mead, she affiliates to the Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou iwi.