Biography and expertise
Dr Moana Tane is an Indigenous Maori woman from Aotearoa New Zealand, and connects through genealogy to the northern tribes of Te Roroa, Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Wharara and Ngati Hine. Her father’s ancestors were signatories of Te Tiriti O Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) in 1840 and Te Whakaputanga (Declaration of Independence) in 1835. From her mother’s ancestry, Dr Tane connects to the Jelas families of Split (Dalmatia County) in Croatia.
In former roles as CEO, general manager and executive manager, Dr Tane has contributed in collectives to address structural inequity through advocacy, partnerships and collaborations between government, non-government and Indigenous organisations. As a former bureaucrat, Dr Tane has engaged within leadership forums to generate innovations, to identify priorities for funding and to contribute to policy that reflects the needs of Indigenous communities.
Dr Tane embraces decolonised research methodologies and an epistemology that continuously critiques and challenges the structure of Western-based research agenda, and that seeks for justice in issues of land, language, Treaty and racism. She has explored tobacco control and public health strategies and programs, through an Indigenous lens, in national, regional and local contexts, and has worked closely with community-controlled organisations in both Aotearoa NZ and Australia. In 2020 Dr Tane received her PhD by publication, based on her studies of tobacco control programs and initiatives and the traditional connection the Yolngu people have with ngarali’ (tobacco) in remote and very remote communities of East Arnhem Land.
Dr Tane has been an advisory group member of the SISTAQUIT program, supporting Indigenous pregnant women to quit smoking, since 2017 and was a post-doc research fellow with the University of Newcastle from 2020-2021. She became an AI for the iSISTAQUIT scale-up study, funded by the Global Alliance for Chronic Disease (GACD) in 2022, and this year has become a Chief Investigator on the study. She is also a member of the Indigenous Populations Working Group for GACD collaborating with Indigenous researchers from around the world for implementation science using decolonized research frameworks.