Becoming in the Research: A Han Chinese Tauiwi Account of Evolving Positionality in Māori Research Contexts

Positionality statements can identify a researcher's social and cultural location, but they may reveal little about how positional understanding develops through research relationships or affects research conduct. This paper presents a reflexive narrative account of my experience as a Han Chinese adult migrant and tauiwi (non‐Māori) researcher working with Māori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and later engaging with Indigenous Taiwanese delegates. Drawing on narrative inquiry and critical incident analysis, I examine audio journals, written reflections, supervision records and reconstructed memories from my doctoral candidature. The analysis traces how my Han‐majority socialisation, migrant experience, Māori research relationships and encounters in a different Indigenous context challenged my assumptions about identity, power, authority, accountability and knowledge. I distinguish relatively stable structural position from positional understanding, which can develop through relationships, challenge and correction. Reflexivity becomes methodologically consequential when that developing understanding changes interpretation, research relationships, consent processes or claims to power and authority. I also propose portable reflexivity to describe habits of attentiveness that may remain useful across contexts, including recognising the limits of one's knowledge, attending to how others position the researcher and remaining open to correction. These habits may travel, while cultural knowledge, relational responsibilities and authority remain specific to particular communities and histories. The paper contributes a culturally and biographically specific Han Chinese tauiwi perspective to scholarship on reflexivity and positionality in Indigenous research.