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    Māori women's perspectives of raising a loved one who has autism (Takiwātanga) : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology, Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-02-17) Hastie, Jeanette Louise
    This thesis presents research that explored the understandings, worldviews, and approaches of eight Māori māmā (mothers) with children (tamariki) or adolescents (rangatahi) who have been diagnosed with autism (takiwātanga) in Aotearoa New Zealand. An interpretivist qualitative research design was utilised that combined methods from Western methodologies and Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wahine theory and research. The methodology was transformative (whakaahua) in nature, as the concepts behind the Western methodological tools were transformed into the concepts of te ao Māori (the Māori worldview) through the application of Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wahine theory. Eight Māori māmā attended one of four small focus groups consisting of two māmā and the researcher, during which they were encouraged to create an artwork while telling their lived experience of takiwātanga through pūrākau (narratives). Over approximately four hours, the māmā were asked to describe how they navigated the New Zealand education and health systems, and their home and community, with their tamariki and rangatahi with takiwātanga. The pūrākau revealed that the māmā had brought about a transformation of their own by resisting the Western deficit-based model of autism and drawing on their cultural understanding of takiwātanga to change their negative Western-based experiences into positive Indigenous-based ones. This led to the development of a model inspired by the taiaha, a Māori weapon of war, that demonstrates how a deficit-based Western ideology about autism can be transformed into a strengths-based Indigenous ideology about takiwātanga, from both the researcher’s perspective and that of the participants. The findings also identified strong connections between the māmā and those professionals and others who supported them, whom they called “game changers”. Professionals who were not supportive were circumnavigated or dismissed as the māmā held onto their own expertise and developed their own knowledge about takiwātanga. The te ao Māori concepts of whakawhanaungatanga (relationship building), manaakitanga (showing respect, generosity and care for others) and tuakana-teina (the relationship between an older [tuakana] person and a younger [teina] person) were woven throughout the pūrākau, which the māmā drew on to strengthen their mana wahine (power as women) and mātauranga wahine (female knowledge). The thesis concludes that cultural competence for registered professionals in education and health should include formal assessments of their knowledge of te ao Māori concepts such as manaakitanga, whakawhanaungatanga, and tuakana-teina in relation to takiwātanga.
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    Em-power lifting : a case study of women’s weightlifting in Aotearoa : a research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of International Development, Institute of Development Studies, School of People, Environment and Planning, Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2022) Ogilvy, Jamie R. I.
    Through application of an Indigenous (Māori) informed theoretical framing, articulated as Mana Wāhine values, this research report explores the phenomenon of weightlifting with Indigenous (Māori) women from Aotearoa New Zealand, as a vehicle for empowerment. The research project was guided by two main research questions, firstly, what is the role of weightlifting in developing personal, relational, and collective empowerment for Aotearoa New Zealand Indigenous (Māori) women? Secondly, how does this empowerment align with strengthening the values, understood as Mana Wāhine values, of Indigenous (Māori) women? Data was collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews, nine wāhine (female) participants and one tane (male) participant. All participants were aged between 20 – 50 years old and had been participating in strength sports as an athlete or coach or both; six female and one male who were current or past Olympic weightlifters, two female strong women competitors and one power lifter. All participants were of Māori decent or coached wāhine Māori or were allies/accomplices (Whitinui, 2021) of Māori women in strength sport. Findings suggest that weightlifting and strength-based training enhanced the development of the self, increased body satisfaction thus positivity towards body image because women identifying as feeling physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually strong and thus powerful. Their ability to set and achieve goals was enhanced and this carried over into other areas of life. While seemingly an individual sport, feelings of belonging and camaraderie indicated better relational empowerment, as well as collective empowerment due to being part of the lifting community and subscribing to a similar kaupapa. In terms of how these changes aligned with Mana Wāhine values, wāhine spoke about having a sense of authority, notions of manaakitanga and giving back to others and the kaupapa of strong wāhine. Overall, this research highlights that strength-based sport like weightlifting can be a vehicle for personal, relational, and collective empowerment with these elements lending themselves towards strengthening Mana Wāhine values. Of great importance here was the transformative implications noted for women. However, any broader transformative impacts beyond the individuals will require the ongoing challenges of predetermined ideologies i.e., stereotypes of women not being strong, or norms, rules, exclusionary practices and under resourcing, for example, which sees women’s lifting to be situated at the margins. Empowerment of the individual is all well and good, but the individual can only go so far. “Empowerment requires changes to systems, rules, and norms, which undermine large groups of people [Māori women], as well as changes at the level of the individual” (Scheyvens, 2020, p. 120).
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    Colonial discourses of deviance and desire and the bodies of wāhine Māori : a thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Arts at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024) Allen, Elizabeth Anne
    This research traces how colonial ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality contributed to nineteenth and early twentieth-century representations of wāhine Māori and questions how these repetitive inscriptions might continue to have a negative impact on perceptions of wāhine Māori and kōtiro Māori in contemporary culture. As a Mana Wahine study, I demonstrate that fundamental codes of the developing colonial state were affirmed by how Pākehā guarded sexuality, ordered gender, and surveilled race. As a wahine Māori centred project, it examines the colonial dimensions of “domesticity,” the “civilising mission,” and the ‘paternalism of liberalism’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand, specifically, on the assumption that differentiations of race and colonial power were essentially ordered in terms of Western notions of gender. Of particular concern is the management of wāhine Māori sexuality, procreation, child-rearing, and marriage as a mechanism of colonial control of their bodies. Focusing on spaces of perceived proximity and desire as a source from which we can search for newly recognisable forms of social perceptions in relating, it offers an engagement with myriad forms of art across multidisciplinary fields to provide a unique window into a colonial exercise of the imperial project that had a direct impact on the bodies of wāhine Māori. A critical examination of the colonial metaphors around desire and degeneration, of the intimate and affect, attempts to decolonise its representative paradigms by addressing the consequential structural and material histories that, for wāhine Māori, resulted in meting out differential futures based on ‘fabulated’ divisions of worth, prompting the central questions of the dissertation, how are bodies similar or not? How are bodies available or not? How are bodies knowable or not? And to whom?