She was born in Otorohanga and educated at Otorohanga South School and Otorohanga College. She attended the University of Waikato and graduated with Bachelor’s and Masterate degree with Honours in Social Sciences in 1987 and 1990. She is currently undertaking postgraduate studies. She has worked in Education administration and is currently Lecturer in Bicultural Education, Department of Education Studies at the University of Waikato. Graham writes non-fiction.
Biographical sources
- Phone conversation and correspondence with Bella Graham, 15, 17 July and 12 Sept. 1998.
Non-fiction
- "Trafficking Authenticity: Aspects of Non-Māori use of Māori Cultural and Intellectual Property." Selected Conference Papers 1992-1994 New Zealand Museums Journal 25.1 (1995): 31-34.
- In this paper presented at the 1994 MAANZ-MEANZ Conference, Graham describes her journey of gaining access to taonga housed in museums. She also discusses her work with the Tainui oral history project in 1990 and explains the issues surrounding her thesis on the trafficking of Māori cultural and intellectual property.
- "Riding Someone Else’s Waka: Tribal Identity and Academic Theory." Journal Asian Pacific Inscriptions. Identities, Ethnicities, Nationalities. A Special Book Issue of Meridian: The La Trobe University English Review. Ed. Suvendrini Perera. 14.2 Melbourne: La Trobe U, 1995. 45-64.
- This paper is an augmented version of the address she gave to the 1994 Identities/Ethnicities/Nationalities Conference which discusses the "simultaneous official construction and erasure of Māori genealogies and their implication for current initiatives such as the ‘fiscal envelope’ in New Zealand." (Perera, 1995 3).