education system, Smith gained a newfound confidence as a learner. Her family lived in southern Illinois and she attended Carbondale Community High School. When Smith was a teenager, she moved to the US while her father was completing his PhD. She was given the name Tuhiwai as an adult. Her father is Sidney Moko Mead of Ngāti Awa, also a professor, and her mother is June Te Rina Mead, née Walker, of Ngāti Porou.

Smith was born in Whakatāne, New Zealand.

She became the first Māori scholar to be elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2021. In 2021, Smith joined Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi as Distinguished Professor. A report commissioned by the University of Waikato into claims in the letter found that the institution is structurally discriminatory against Māori but did not support other claims in the letter. In September 2020 the hashtag #BecauseOfLindaTuhiwaiSmith went viral when Smith was one of a group of academics who wrote an open letter to the Ministry of Education on racism in education and news that her contract would not be renewed. In the same year she retired Pro Vice Chancellor Māori and took a short-term contract as Professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies in the newly formed Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies. In November 2016 she was appointed a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. In 2017, Smith was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's ' 150 women in 150 words', celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand. In the 2013 New Year Honours, Smith was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and education. Smith is the Pro-Vice Chancellor Māori, Dean of the School of Māori and Pacific Development and Director of Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato. This work is considered a major contribution to research methods in social justice research. Smith is the author of Decolonizing Methodologies ( Zed Books, 1999, 2012, and 2021), a critical analysis of the role of Western scholarly research played in the process of colonization of indigenous cultures. She was a member of the Māori political group Ngā Tamatoa while a university student. Her 1996 thesis was titled Ngā aho o te kakahu matauranga: the multiple layers of struggle by Maori in education. Smith earned her BA, MA (hons), and PhD degrees at the University of Auckland. The daughter of Sidney Moko Mead, she affiliates to the Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou iwi. Linda Tuhiwai Te Rina Smith CNZM (née Mead born 1950), previously a professor of indigenous education at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, is now Distinguished Professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Paulo Freire Ngā aho o te kakahu matauranga: the multiple layers of struggle by Maori in education. (1996).

Linda tuhiwai smith books