This study explores the transformative experiences of five students in the Master of Applied Indigenous Knowledge programme at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Employing an Indigenous autoethnographic approach, this paper delves into the students' personal and professional growth, each from different backgrounds and professions. The research highlights integrating Indigenous knowledge into various professional contexts, emphasising cultural identity, personal growth, community engagement, and resilience. The programme, blending academic rigour with indigenous insights, underscores how education can empower individuals to contribute to their communities. The narratives of these students, reflecting their journey through cultural reclamation and professional development, contribute significantly to understanding Indigenous knowledge systems and their application in contemporary settings.

Allyship is regarded as an important role in the academic setting to support the inclusion of people with Lived Experience (LE) of mental health and addiction challenges. Understanding the context within which the allies in academia work requires further scrutiny to ensure power sharing. This narrative provides a dialogue between a LE academic and a nursing academic on their experiences of allyship with a focus on the university setting. These reflections present the potential challenges that both the LE academic role and their ally can face in establishing these roles. The structures within the university setting that impact on the success or not of the role of ally are also considered. Mental health academics have created a body of published literature on the topic of LE in academia presenting both the successes and barriers to authentic allyship. This narrative sets out to make a further contribution to the contested role of allies and offers a closer analysis of allyship and the power dynamics that are in play. We conclude by offering the notion of coalition as an alternative approach to the success of LE roles in academic institutions.

Traversing the doctorate from start to completion can be stressful, with some students never reaching completion. This autoethnographic study explored how one researcher completed a Doctor of Philosophy and maintained their subjective wellbeing through ‘self-introspection’, using the analogy of the three little pigs. Data was generated through autoethnographic accounts. A four-step iterative process frames data analysis. There were four key findings. Self-talk with internal dialogue was a strategy used to move thinking to a more optimistic state of mind. Relational connectivity was effective in deliberately shifting negative affect states. Organisational skills enabled dealing with cognitive complexity. The use of a Researcher Journal guided self-regulation and self-control in self-reflection, contributing to the positive maintenance of one researcher’s subjective wellbeing. This autoethnographic account highlights ways of working that could be beneficial to help other researchers balance their subjective wellbeing while successfully completing the doctoral journey.

For some whānau Māori, colonisation has resulted in the disconnection from their home marae, whenua, hapū and iwi. This paper takes a collective authoethnograhical approach to describing and exploring a recent journey of reconnection and discovery embarked on by one whānau. The journey is framed by the construction of a waka hourua, a double hulled canoe, to represent the two parts of the hapū; those who retained their home base connection and those who were disconnected through generations of colonisation, racism and geographical distance.