Māori studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My mother left Aotearoa at twenty-two and I grew up with fragments: a few words used at home, a photograph of a meeting house I could not name, and a pounamu pendant I was told to look after but not much else. For a long time I assumed that was simply how family history worked. What changed my thinking was a Year 12 History unit on colonial land policy, where I began reading about the Treaty of Waitangi and the differences between the English text and te Tiriti in te reo Māori. The idea that two versions of the same document could carry different meanings about sovereignty, and that this disagreement is still argued over in law and politics today, made me want to study the subject properly rather than picking up pieces secondhand. I am drawn to Māori studies because it treats language, history, land and identity as connected rather than separate topics. From my reading I understand that concepts such as whakapapa are not only about who your ancestors were but about relationships to places and obligations that follow from them, which is a way of organising knowledge quite different from the chronological history I am used to writing essays about. I want to learn to read primary sources in te reo, to understand tikanga on its own terms, and to be careful about the difference between having heritage and having understanding. I am aware that I come to this partly from the outside, having grown up in England, and I would rather be honest about that and learn than assume a connection I have not yet earned.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A levels have given me most of the habits I will need. History is where I learned to compare sources that disagree: for my coursework I examined how nineteenth-century missionary accounts and later historians described the same events differently, and I became interested in whose voices were recorded and whose were summarised by someone else. That question sits behind a lot of what I want to study. English Literature has trained me to read closely and to notice how a text does its work, which I think matters when translation is involved. Geography has been more useful than I expected, particularly units on resource management and on how communities contest land use, because it gave me vocabulary for arguments about ownership, access and environmental responsibility. Alongside school I have completed two terms of a beginners' te reo Māori class taught online by a tutor based in Auckland. It is slow work with a nine-hour time difference and early Sunday starts, but I can now manage a simple pepeha, follow basic instructions and hear sentence patterns rather than isolated words. Pronunciation drills have made me pay attention to vowel length, which changes meaning in ways English speakers miss. I have also read Ranginui Walker's Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou: Struggle Without End, which set out a longer continuity of Māori political resistance than the discrete episodes I had learned at school, and I keep a notebook of terms and questions I want to take further.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

For the past two years I have helped run a small New Zealand social club that meets in a community hall about forty minutes from home. Most members are older than me, and I do the unglamorous jobs: booking the room, chasing raffle prizes, setting out chairs and writing the email newsletter. Last February I suggested we mark Waitangi Day properly rather than just holding the usual shared lunch, and I ended up organising a short afternoon programme with two members speaking about growing up in Northland and a quiz I wrote on the Treaty. Around forty people came, the most we had had, and several brought children, which the committee had been trying to achieve for a while. I learned to check my facts with people who knew more than me before saying anything in public, and to accept corrections without becoming defensive. My Saturday job at a garden centre café has taught me a different kind of usefulness. I take orders, work the coffee machine and clear tables during a four-hour rush, and I have become the person the supervisor asks to train new starters because I explain things calmly. Dealing with a queue of impatient customers has made me steadier and better at reading when someone needs help rather than conversation. I also play netball for a local fifth-division team, where I am not the strongest player but rarely miss a Wednesday. Between these commitments I have got better at planning my week, which I expect to need at university, particularly if study involves language practice that only works when it is done regularly rather than in bursts.

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