Re-imagining multiculturalism: Small steps towards indigenizing acculturation science

Although acculturation is among the most extensively studied topics in contemporary social science, research concerning the processes, outcomes and conditions of acculturation in Indigenous communities is relatively rare. This is a critical omission given that much of the intercultural contact across the globe is occuring in the Native lands of the world’s 476 million Indigenous Peoples. Before examining the proposition that the condition of multiculturalism is the most “advantageous” approach to cultivating positive intercultural relations or that it promotes enhanced psychological well-being in Native, Aboriginal and First Nations communities, we must understand what multiculturalism means to Indigenous Peoples and how they experience it in their everyday lives. Accordingly, we focus on notions of multiculturalism in a post-colonial settler society, working with Māori, the Indigenous Peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Adopting a Braided River framework, combining Western and Indigenous perspectives with inductive and deductive techniques, we describe an emerging program of mixed methods research that has yielded rich, nuanced data about Indigenous conceptualizations of multiculturalism. The results indicate that the defining features of multiculturalism found in acculturation science overlap to a limited extent with Indigenous perspectives and that additional social, political and historical issues must be addressed to ensure that multiculturalism can benefit Indigenous Peoples.