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  • CAREER Q&A

‘I get paid for my outputs, not because I am Māori’: why Indigenous researchers often face double duty

Amanda Black’s work has shown that healthy soil structures depend on the synergy of a large variety of organisms — and so does scientific discovery, she argues.
By
  1. Jane Palmer

    1. Jane Palmer is a freelance journalist in Colorado.

Amanda Black, outlined in teal, pictured with two students while working in the lab.

Teaching ethics and cultural responsiveness: Amanda Black (right), with students Rosemary Imara (middle) and Meikura Taiaroa Arahanga (left). Credit: Nancy Zhou for Nature

When Amanda Black started university in New Zealand in 1995, she got her first taste of discrimination. Black is an Indigenous person to New Zealand who comes from a rural community, and several wealthier, white students told her that she must have received special privileges to attend university, that her ability was inferior and that she was stupid and had little to offer scientifically. She says she has faced similar attitudes throughout her career, sometimes from fellow academics — despite receiving multiple awards for her research as a soil ecologist, including a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2021. In 2020, she became the director of Bioprotection Aotearoa in Canterbury, one of New Zealand’s National Centres of Research Excellence.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03578-w

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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