Kaupapa Māori and Multispecies Justice: a reciprocal critique

Kaupapa Māori (theory and research which centres Māori (the Indigenous people of New Zealand)) and Multispecies Justice operate as sites of critical resistance and generative scholarship. In this article, I introduce the process of reciprocal critique, and I demonstrate that considering these two fields in relation to each other enables us to imagine ways in which they might be further developed. A Multispecies Justice-motivated critique of Kaupapa Māori urges Kaupapa Māori theorists and researchers to move beyond the anthropocentrism which pervades it, so that we can effectively address a broader range of crises. A Kaupapa Māori-motivated critique of Multispecies Justice admonishes Multispecies Justice theorists and researchers to attend more closely to power disparities, the risks inherent in relational research, and the mysterious. This process, reciprocal critique, could also be used in other contexts—for example, in enabling diverse Indigenous research methodologies to learn from, and enhance, each other.