(Dr Waireti Roestenburg, Open Polytechnic) The doctoral research project Te Whakarauora Mauri explores how reconnecting with Māori and Indigenous source or spiritualities, has the power to restore "personal-collective, local-global" healing, wellbeing and development.

“An unconquerable ‘spirit’ of Māori/Indigenous vitalities has been infusing our personal, intergenerational bodies and lives since forever. It imbues an against-all-odds wherewithal to survive, be well and restore the conditions of our thriving. Today it is evident as Māori-Indigenous survival, and in the local-global wave of revitalisation,” explains Dr Waireti Roestenburg, Principal Academic at Open Polytechnic.

“Lived experience and literature accounts indicate that even while these source forces remain powerfully present in our hearts, bodies and lives, subsequent to colonisation, many of us no longer have the knowledge, language and practices needed to recognise and activate them.”

Roestenburg’s doctoral research applied a ‘mana wairua’ spirit-led, kaupapa Māori approach to examine experiences of Indigenous/Māori revitalisation.

She explains that the origins of this research were first sparked at a training wānanga some years ago, when she had a profound spiritual experience of deep connection with her ancestors – an experience she calls her ‘ancestor epiphany’.

“I write about this transformational and life-altering experience at the start of my doctorate because it’s what set me on my pathway to academia and Indigenous revitalisation research.”

As well as undertaking a literature review of Indigenous resilience and Indigenous revitalisation in Aotearoa and around the world, Roestenburg interviewed six Māori or Indigenous people who had been alienated from knowing their roots, but “later found, connected deeply with and went on to dignify and perpetuate their Indigenous people, lands and life ways, exemplifying revitalised personal-collective healing, wellbeing and development.”

“They could have been described as ‘dispossessed’ Indigenous, but I prefer to use the term ‘against all odds’ because it’s more positive and mana-affirming,” she says.

“Each of the participants shared experiences of turning points similar to my ancestor epiphany, when something inside them sparked a reconnection to Indigenous source forces in their lives.”

Roestenburg cites a quote from Dr Ranginui Walker in which he said: It is the positive embracing of identity which is the driving force of the current regeneration of Māori culture.

“I wanted to know more about the connection between personal positive Indigenous development and the collective Indigenous development wave. If those connecting factors could be identified, could we deliberately draw on them to facilitate much needed healing, wellbeing and positive development for Māori and Indigenous people and communities – at local, national and even global levels?”

The research identified four transformational elements:

• ‘Ancestor mandate’ as the active nourishment, sanctioning, intervention and protection of seen and unseen ‘spirit’ connections.

• The indelible presence of an unconquerable ‘Indigenous knowing-in-us-that-knows’, especially in intergenerational ‘against all odds’ conditions.
  
  

• The vital importance of having access to socio-political-historical narratives that tell the truth about what has happened, and continues to happen, to Indigenous people who remain on their own lands.
  
  

• Having access to safe and welcoming opportunities for reconnection to Indigenous peoples, land and life ways.

“These elements have been woven together to form an Indigenous vitalities and wellbeing process which has informed the collaborative development and delivery of kaupapa Māori rangahau-wānanga or personal-collective healing/learning and research spaces with Māori communities.”

Roestenburg plans to continue to design and deliver these community-based, wairua-centric rangahau wānanga, while also gathering and analysing data to show evidence of their impacts.

“By weaving together the practice and the outcomes, we can understand more about the holistic healing, wellbeing and development potential of the unstoppable and inevitable revitalisation and restoration of thriving Māori/Indigenous peoples, knowledge and life ways.”

Publications

https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529689792

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/18207

Researcher

Dr Waireti Roestenburg (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera, Rongomaiwahine, Ngāpuhi nui-tonu, Dutch, Irish, English…) has a PhD in Psychology and is a Māori cycologist and wairua Māori practitioner.

To support our people to remember and release their wisdom and power

Te Whakaohooho, Te Whakarauora Mauri  

Waireti is a Principal Academic and Programme Lead for the Degree in Social Health and Wellbeing at the Open Polytechnic, and has also been practising wairua-centric healing and wellbeing for over 25 years. Her praxis approach is informed by a synergy of four healing/knowledge systems: decades of wairua-centric lived experience, training and practice; enlivened whakapapa as revealed knowledge; original teachings (tohunga/tohuna/elders); and obsidian-edged (Indigenous and other) empirical scholarship and research, including post-doctoral.
To awaken and release personal-collective Māori/Indigenous and human holistic healing, wellbeing and development, her praxis emerges and affirms the key transformational elements of an evident (yet subsequent to colonisation, no longer well-understood) wave of unstoppable and inevitable Māori/Indigenous re-vitalisation. As Te Amokura Healing, Wellbeing and Development, Waireti delivers a range of empirically informed, taonga-based services, including ‘Whakaohooho Wairua Māori Re-vitalisation Programmes’, ‘Mauri-informed approaches to trauma, living, learning and healing’ and ‘Taonga Ihi Orooro – Māori Sacred Sound Healing Wānanga’.

Contact Waireti
www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz