This article is dedicated to the memory of Reverend Canon George (Hori) Ehau, a kaumātua who illumined the way back home for many.
Abstract
This article articulates a therapeutic pathway centred in a reindigenisation construct, Puna, an indigenous-centric counselling approach. This model repositions counselling and psychotherapy away from the dominant western hegemonic reverberating with the binary of coloniser/colonised, recentering the therapeutic narrative in Te Ao Māori, drawing upon an emacipatory psychology orientated ideology. Implicit in this perspective is the centrality of social positioning in society, relating to three key areas in historical and contemporary indigenous health disparities, defined as three pillars of imperialism, i.e., capitalism, patriarchy and coloniality. Counselling Indigenous people is therefore contextualised in a socio-political narrative. Two key tenets of this approach are the importance of counsellor transparency in terms of their own positionality, and being cognizant of the intersectional fluidity of cultural identity. This paper argues that all counsellors need to have the ability to approximate their counselling interventions relative to the worldview of an Indigenous person. Given that the majority of counsellors and psychotherapists are not Māori, and the significant numbers of Tāngata Māori presenting to mental health and psychological services, this paper also examines some of the cross cultural considerations, including eurocentric assumptions of western counselling traditions as compared with an Indigenous worldview, navigating therapeutic impasse dynamics and the metaphysical nature of Indigenous ontology.
Introduction
In upholding our ethical commitment to proactively rally against racism and social injustice, psychotherapists and counsellors are in an pivotal position to promote counselling practice situated in a decolonial discourse when working with Tāngata Māori (Goodman & Gorski, 2015). This perspective ensures a normative indigenous-centric positioning of therapy, mitigating against unconscious reenactments of colonial hegemony within the therapeutic relationship (Addy, 2008; Maddison, 2013).
Western and Indigenous worldviews are in many respects diametrically opposed to each other in both values and beliefs. The epistemologies of eurocentric notions of health and wellbeing come historically from a paradigm based upon a cartesian, positivistic scientific perspective, which is reductive in orientation (Durie, 2003). By way of contrast with an Indigenous worldview, compartmentalisation in this way is not only deemed undesirable, but also ideologically anathema to the indigenous mind (Wendt et al., 2022).
Preframing the counselling process in a decolonial discourse requires courageous conversations and decernment in sensitively navigating the intersubjective space between counsellor and tangata, both in the formation of the therapeutic alliance and the ongoing co- creation of the therapeutic dialogue (Perls et al., 1951).
In the early stages of engagement with the tangata, the counsellor’s role is to proactively identify and address any cross cultural assumptions, assisted in part through a clear delineation of the extent to which a non–Maōri counsellor can traverse the Indigenous landscape. By its nature it is a declarative dialogue, circumventing the oft counter-transferential contraction in the counsellor, driven by reflexive anxiety. This dynamic occurs through limitations in knowledge and understanding of Te Ao Māori, that is often the case for non-Māori counsellor’s in particular, when engaging with Tāngata Māori (Durie & Hermansson, 1990). The situation is compounded further, by broad variations in applied Indigenous specific training as mandated by the various professional ethical bodies (Curtis et al., 2019). A student counsellor put it this way, “As I have been learning I have noticed two fears, the biggest one is that I’m going to mess up the words and embarrass myself, but then the other fear is that (once I get better) that my Māori clients could feel insecure about not knowing te reo Māori” (V. Cabreana, personal communication, July 6, 2023).
The obverse of this situation is a counsellor’s avoidance in addressing matters pertaining to cross cultural counselling issues, which is a form of micro-invalidation (Sue et al., 2007). Avoidance either intentionally or through an unconscious bias contributes to tāngata intuitively feeling culturally unsafe and subsequently engaging from the standpoint of a false self, a position of compliance, where the true self is hidden from view (Ehrlich, 2021). By implication, if the core self cannot feel safe enough to reveal itself, no meaningful deep structural dialogue or healing process can occur. The counselling process is subsequently built upon a deep therapeutic impasse without a word being uttered (Hook et al., 2016). Put another way, if whanaungatanga, that is feelings of kinship and belonging, are not firmly established through rituals of initial engagement in the removal of other-ness, tapu, the tapu remains in place (NiaNia et al., 2017) Therefore while it may outwardly appear that a therapeutic alliance is developing into meaningful dialogue, it may well be superficial and effectively becomes another form of disenfranchisement.
Coloniality
Coloniality drives the settler colonial discourse which shapes our prevailing socio-political narrative. Coloniality, is a term which describes how the re-inscription of colonial power hierarchies occurs, as distinguished from distinct historical events. This distinction provides the continuity thread between historic events and its contemporary manifestation in the ongoing unfoldment of operationalised racism experienced by Indigenous people (Reid et al., 2019). Coloniality therefore refers to a series of systemic institutional mechanisms through which the intergenerational transmission of trauma is recycled over time (Paradies, 2016).
The settler colonial worldview is centred in a racist ideology (Wolfe, 2006). Socially assigned race, as prescribed by the dominant discourse, is socially constructed, meaning it is an idea that has come into common acceptance, however, in reality, there is no such thing as race, as there are no such thing as discrete racial groups at a biological level. Racializing groups of people influences how those people are perceived and treated by health services and wider society. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic status, racism remains a primary determinant in driving inequalities for the health of Indigenous peoples and people of colour (Neblett, 2019; Reid et al., 2022).
Racism enacted at an institutional level, through structural violence, creates access barriers, and influences the delivery and quality of health services treatment, which in turn leads to poorer health outcomes for Tāngata Māori (Neblett, 2019). This is sanctioned by successive governmental policy biases, and the ambivalent acquiescence of wider society (Reeves, 2000).
Collective group trauma experienced through forced assimilation, rape, and murder, contributes to transmission of a complex trauma syndrome affecting an entire people over time. One definition of intergenerational trauma is, “an accumulation of psychological and emotional wounding, over a lifetime, transferred across generations through catastrophic collective trauma experiences” (Hill et al., 2010, p. 41). Trauma patterning is an embodied state, passed along through successive generations, increasing group susceptibility to a wide range of physical and psychological health conditions, right down to a biological level. There is growing body of research that explains how these adverse social conditions influence gene expression, and intergenerational trauma transmission (Martin et al., 2022).
Martin et al. (2022) states that recent social epigenetics research provides a biological explanation in understanding how embodied trauma experiences are transferred, increasing vulnerability to a host of medical conditions, including a compromised immune system, chronic diseases, systemic inflammation, morbidity, and mortality. What social epigenetic research tells us is that DNA methylation, a heritable genetic transmission marker, is a primary biological process mediating which genes are switched on and those that do not. Exposure to racism and oppression experiences, are implicated in malignant gene expression/activation. One explanation is that the DNA methylation process is influential in premature aging and subsequent mortality. This may help explain why Māori die on average seven years earlier than non- Māori. From this emerging, scientifically informed perspective, we can assert, that if you are Māori, it is more likely that you will suffer premature death (Manchester, 2014). In this sense, a toxic society, is the primary contributing influence (Boeving, 2023).
Enculturation, Deculturation and Acculturation
The cummulative assault on Māori identity, language, and culture, has been described as a soul wound (Matthews, 2023). That is a loss of place, identity, purpose and meaning. A researcher into genocide, Wolfe, wrote in this sense that “invasion is a structure, not an event” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 338). Acculturative stressors exascerbate indigenous identity equilibrium, fragmenting and destabilising a secure sense of cultural identity. Renfrey (1992) states that the process of acculturation, which involves adapting to usually a more dominant culture (while seeking to maintain ethnocultural authenticity), creates identity disequilibium. Being caught between two worlds, engenders ethno-stress, which manifests in varying combinations of internalised acculturative stressors (Pilon, 2020).
Wendt et al. (2022) states that this sense of group diaspora, results in feelings of shame, hopelessness, emptiness, and disconnection. Further, symptoms associated with this state of being, may create a predisposition for increased vulnerability to (mal)adaptive self-soothing behaviours, including compulsive addictive behaviours, self-harm gestures and other manifestations of psychological distress. These issues are further exacerbated by many finding themselves in socially and economically untenable positions (Matthews, 2023). Renfrey (1992) asserted that an evalutation of acculturation/deculturation stressors is useful in determining how best to position counselling with Indigenous people. In other words, it helps in identifying the appropriate weighting of therapy. Some tangata are entirely comfortable with western therapeutic constructs, others, indigenous framing, for others something in between (Durie, 2003).
Rochford (2004) states that modern iterations of the cultural identity continuum concept have moved completely out of a linear, deficit related conceptualisation, to a more bidirectional orientation, based in a holistic worldview, framed as concentrically overlapping circles, akin to the Te Whare Tapa Whā model, incorporating the physical, mental, familial, and spiritual. This perspective is alligned to an Indigenous worldview where all things are interconnected (Tanabe, 2015). Psychological problems in this view are understood as imbalances between the taha, or life dimentions, not aberrant discrete pathological processes.
The phenomenon of identity fragmentation appears throughout the literature, across all Aboriginal peoples to varying degrees. This understanding has significant implications for counsellors and psychotherapists in cross cultural therapy. Understanding the influence of acculturative stressors in context, allows a counsellor to craft therapeutic interventions in ways that mirror the uniquely intersectionally nuanced phenomonology of the tangata (Durie, 2003; Shin et al., 2017).
Therapist/Counsellor considerations in cross cultural counselling and psychotherapy
Torrey, an ethno-psychiatrist provides very compelling evidence, arguing that for counselling to take place, communication is required, and for this to occur, an understanding of a person’s worldview is a prerequisite (McCormack, 1995).
Unexamined assumptions informing western counselling models, may paradoxically undermine the very purposes of counselling with Indigenous people. Counselling does not occur in a sociological vacuum. A quote that articulates the exigency of this issue states, “Māori identities and self-image have been formed within a complex colonised reality, embedded with a Eurocentric ecology” (McLachlan, 2021, p. 80). The implication of this statement is that Pākehā psychotherapists and counsellors have “the privilege of seeing without being seen” (Pailey, 2020, p. 773). This is more broadly referred to as “the white gaze” (Pailey, 2020, p. 773). In other words the counsellor occupies the vantage point of being the observer without being observed.
By way of illustration, if you were to ask a fish to describe water, the fish would be at a loss to explain, because the ocean, the environment it inhabits, is self-evident. It is just the way it is. Water is in the fish and around the fish.There is no other contrasting opposite available to compare with. It is like the eye, it sees everything but it can’t see itself. This unspoken dynamic in a counselling context may evoke an adaptive form of situational logic whereby an Indigenous person adopts a default position of expressing their experience, consciously or unconsciously, against a backdrop of a white colonial frame of reference. Part of the self remains hidden.
In this sense counselling is political (Freire, 1970). A counterpositioning to this tendency in counselling is through a liberatory psychology perspective as ellucidated in the work of Paulo Freire, a revolutionary educationist. Freire coined the term conscientisation. Conscientisation is an emancipatory teaching methodology, a form of emacipatory psychology, which combines education (in this case the context of counselling) with raising sociopolitical awareness. This process seeks to elevate the social consciousness of the common person, so that they can understand the power structures of their society, and their own relative positioning in society. Freire also supported development of knowledge through education to empower the people towards social action, to proactively change their social circumstances. The concept of conscientisation was adapted by a social psychologist, Martín-Baró, who asserted that all mental health professionals should understand the implication of this concept in their therapeutic work (Abe, 2020). This concept is articulated in the sentiment of the following statement, “If knowledge is power then understanding is liberation” (Meyer, 2001 p. 125).
How does a psychotherapist or counsellor approximate their zone of therapeutic concordance with Tāngata Māori?
Durie (2003) in his Māori centred approach Paiheretia, suggests three broad therapeutic pathways to consider in addressing the counselling needs of Tāngata Māori. The first is traditional healing methods through customary practices, the second, are referred to as bicultural models, that is the modification of conventional western methods, and third, Māori centred approaches, by Māori for Māori, the counselling approach is centred in a Māori worldview.
Wendt et al. (2022) proposes a different taxonomy, consisting of four approaches or paths. He describes different vantage points for evaluating best practices for psychotherapy with aboriginal peoples, they are (a) limiting psychotherapy to empirically supported treatments, (b) prioritising culturally adapted interventions, (c) focussing on common best practice elements of all psychotherapies, and (d) supporting traditional Indigenous practices that promote ‘culture as cure’. This view is aligned with emerging research which supports a general culture as cure theme supported by a growing number of international findings that indicate that positively enhancing one’s cultural identity through re-enculturative experiences through gradual exposure experiences are linked to increased self-esteem and mental wellbeing. These processes create a form of cultural buffering enhancing resilience (Matika et al., 2017).
Wendt et al. (2022) further recommends a flexible approach stating that the First Nations people of Canada, refer to a concept of two eyed seeing, that is the ability to shuttle between two worldview perpectives, western and indigenous, epistemological pluralism. This view is endorsed by Durie (2003) who recommends an informed eclectic approach. From a counselling perspective that the counsellor blends therapeuetic elements from both western therapeutic modalities and Indigenous traditions in a manner that accurately reflects the needs of the tangata.
Autoethnography sketch
My mother was Pākehā and my father Māori. My father passed away when I was three years old. I only have recollections of him from my mother, brother and older sister, I was the youngest. We lived in Porirua, away from both of my iwi, and I knew none of my Māori relatives. I had no direct, ongoing tangible connections with Te Ao Māori. I had lost my primary connection to tuakiritanga, that is, identity, language and culture. At this time in my life I did not know, that I did not know. I did not know what being Māori meant, only that my surname was Tohiariki and I was always asked to spell it at school which felt like I was apologising for something. This disconnection from Māori culture created unintentionally through my fathers death, contributed significantly to a loss of my own cultural identity (Durie, 2003).
In my early adult years, I can remember a friend saying to me once that a loss of cultural identity is like being adopted. There will come a time when you quite naturally want to seek out your birth parents.
In my early twenties with growing dissatisfaction, I began reflecting more deeply about my life with a growing awareness that something was missing. I was reading self help orientated books voraciously and discovered that I had an insatiable curiosity about psychological concepts, combined with a desire to help others deal with problems and difficulties. I had experienced enough of my own problems, I thought, and had an empathy for those that suffered from various forms of psychological distress. I also felt this burgeoning awareness growing of my own sense of cultural disconnection. I began to hear more clearly the whisper of my tūpuna.
I eventually applied for a job as a Pūkenga Atawhai, working in forensic mental health services and I got the job. That opened a door to a lot of training opportunities and joining a small team of Māori health practitioners who were a lot more culturally and politically aware than I was. Through a process of osmosis I began to develop my own critical consciousness with a deepening understand of the social history of Aotearoa and my position in it (Friere, 1970). I remember doing a presentation in a course about the Treaty of Waitangi. The understanding I acquired through this learning ignited both my anger and determination. I sublimated my anger into a drive to learn, unbeknown to me at the time, education became my emacipatory pathway.
I applied for a two year kaupapa Māori alcohol and drug counselling course which was tutored by a well known Rangatira, Paraire Huata. The course had two aspects. One was to learn generic person centred counselling skills, reframed in Māori concepts and terminology, the second was a series of wānanga each month, spread over both years, where course participants attended a series of wānanga being held at a different Ngāi Tahu marae to learn the history and kawa of each hapu. The combination of these elements helped me to experience an increasing sense of identity and of belonging (Durie, 2003).
I noticed that when we had wānanga, a strong sense of identity would be felt and when I went back to my normal everyday life this sense would fade. I came to understand that exposure to Māori environments evoked a knowing in me that was gradually awakening. This is ahi kā, rekindling the flame. Once I got a sense of this, it became magnetic, it drew me in.
In my early twenties I travelled to Tapuika, Te Arawa and later Whānau-a-Apanui to meet some of my Māori relatives. They did not know me so I still felt a little like an outsider even though they were my people. I learnt some of my whakapapa and my sense of cultural identity grew stronger. One of the gifts of knowing who you are is a sense of determination and resolve that begins to build and a growing sense of esteem and confidence (Matika et al., 2017). I would call this mana, now. The core beliefs I had about my perceived limitations were crumbling as I became more connected to myself.
I began working for a Kaupapa Māori Social Service, and there I met Matua Hori Ehau. My process of reindiginisation flourished over the next few years under his guidance. I learnt a lot from him. Matua Hori epitomises what I believe a kaumātua should be. Compassionate, passionate and forthright in his beliefs and values. Matua Hori tended to tell the same stories over and over again and yet, I had a listening ear to learn something new with each new retelling. I particularly enjoyed his use of whakataukī, his stories about his iwi, Ngāti Porou and some of their ways. Matua Hori also used whakataukī to convey important principles and values. He was an Anglican Priest, a Canon, and also comes from a family of tohunga. He would say in respect to Christianity, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. By way of explanation, he would say that the difference between tohungatanga and Christianity, was that with the “old ways” there was no forgiveness. He seemed to have this ability to hold somewhat paradoxical belief systems with a relaxed clarity.
I have always had an interest in the etymology of words. Matua had a particular way of breaking down Māori kupu, words, which in turn, he would link to metaphorical stories, and he would share pūrākau, archetypal ancestral stories. In this way I came to appreciate how powerful the transmission of wisdom and values from the old world, te ao tawhito can apply to today’s world te ao hurihuri, the ever changing world. These are messages I now pass on to others, they nourish the soul, the wairua.
Paraire Huata once described Te Kore, the primordial beginning of creation as being a place of chaotic energy, brimming with pontential, seeking an outlet. Te Ao Mārama is the other polarity, the world of light. The movement from the shadow to the light (Reeves, 2000). A movement from potential to potentiation.This is the purpose of Puna, the movement into one’s full potential, to move from Te Kore to Te Ao Mārama (Piripi & Body, 2010).
Māori centred approaches: Puna
Puna is an elegantly simple word for a spring of clear water. If you look into a spring of water, you will see a reflection of yourself. Water has is no judgement, water has no opinion. The Puna is a metaphorical mirror, through which you look into, to see a reflection of your own stream of consciousness looking at itself (Wright, 2009). For the counsellor this requires an organic merging quality of attuned emotional resonance with the tangata (Lichtenberg, 1985). As we embody our ancestors, they are also present with us. Puna provides a medium for our ancestors to speak to one another through us (Welch, 2019). In this way Puna honours the transcendental nature of Indigenous knowing (Cortright, 1997).
The pathway for the Puna journey begins with a simple exposition of the metaphor, and further explanation that the primary purpose of Puna is for the exploration of tuakiritanga, that is, identity, language and culture, or to put in other words, to reflect on ko wai au, who am I (Pitama et al., 2017). In many instances the clarification of cultural identity through a socratic questioning process will not even be required. It will be apparent in the mata, the presence, that the tangata brings (Lichtenberg, 1985).
The moment a tangata enters into the kōrero of the Puna, by either a natural segue linking personal experiences through the medium of the puna, or inferentially in any other way, Te Ao Māori becomes the prism through through which we begin looking (Pitama et al., 2017). This needs to be tempered with the counsellor managing their own countertransference for premature closure. In other words a counsellor is not preemptively following a predetermined agenda about the worldview of the tangata. If the tangata is not ready, willing or able, I as counsellor, do not try maneuver them ahead of what they have capacity for, as this simply creates resistance (Britt et al., 2014). I remain person centred. As counsellor, I understand that complexities of ethno-stress which at times manifests as ambivalence or even aversion to Te Ao Māori. Having said this, if and when the time is opportune, Puna positions counselling therapy with an Indigenous-centric locus. Putting a stake in the ground in this way removes any transcultural ambiguity in the positioning of therapeutic work (Pitama et al., 2017).
As counsellor, I provide the therapeutic container for rongoa, the healing energy impetus, by the empathically attuned responses I make to the tangata kōrero, as if through their eyes, through their experience of their life (Boyer, 2023). No superordinate theoretical/therapuetic lens is required per se, or any form of psychiatric typological formulation. What a tangata says is taken at face value, phenomenologically, that is I understand and accept that their perception of their inner and outer world, is their world. If I, as counsellor try to superimpose some type of meta-insight , through my own conceptual, therapeutic prism, combined with my own assumptions, I will have so much mental clutter, I will not have the ability to be present, let alone experience near enough, to meet the tangata, kanohi ki te kanohi (Faucheaux & Weiss, 1999).
The counsellor embodies the quality of water, reflects the kōrero of the tangata, in the same way water mirrors back the image of observer (Gallese et al., 2007). By way of analogy, I have six mokopuna, grandchildren. If you divide the word mokopuna, into two words, you get moko meaning identity, and puna meaning a spring of water. So when I look at my mokopuna, I see myself. Ko au ko koe, ko koe ko au, I am you and you are me. This is the transpersonal dimension of Indigenous-centric counselling (Cortright, 1997).
There is an openess and receptivity from the counsellor of moving with the mauri, the life force within the tangata. Whatever is on top is the place we begin. The mauri, life force of the tangata may be compressed, it may be scattered, or it may be chaotic. In most instances there is a need to build and revitalise the mauri, the life essence. McLachlan (2021) describes mauri as existing in various energetically vibratory states, or degrees of vitality. a weakened or depleted state of mauri, mauri kahupō, is a state of low vitality, mauri moe is defined as either quiescence, a safe place, or a place of isolation depending on the context. Mauri oho, (spark) is to be alert, and mauri ora, is a state of full vitality and engagement with life. A state of alignment and balance. Durie and Hermansson (1990) further state that mauri ora is a harmonious state of wellbeing is indicative of spiritual attunement.
Mauri kahupō requires rongoa, in the form of spiritual intervention, ritualised in karakia, prayer, in opening the spiritual channel for whakawātea te huarahi, clearing the path for the life essence to move. This process may evoke a release of pent up emotions in a tangi, tears. A cathartic emotional exhale. The intention is to progressively create a sense of spaciousness in the hinengaro, the tinana and the wairua. This process takes as long as it takes. This is wā as related to the Māori concept of time. There are no sharp demarcations between past, present and future in this way of knowing and being (Tanabe, 2015). Gradually a tangata can move from mauri kahupō to mauri moe.
Allegorically, the process allows the mud and silt that has been stirred up in the Puna to begin to settle. As the silt settles, the Puna becomes clear. A tangata is able to see themselves more clearly with much less distortion. This is the whakatau, the settling, to prepare for what comes next. Mauri oho. For the counsellor, this requires a preparatory attitude, expressed as pou whakarae, an anticipatory openess to what is becoming emergent in the moment.
The creation of a culturally affirmative environment, engenders feelings of safety and trust. Once there are enough consistent safety signals present, tangata can feel secure enough to arrive, this is an informal form of pōwhiri, gathering together in establishing trust and safety. This process reminds a tangata of their inherent mana. We have gone a long way in removing tapu, the otherness between us in a spiritual transitional movement from tapu to noa.
Three Indigenous responsive counselling interventions we can operationalise in removing otherness, or tapu, are kai, wai and karakia. Breaking bread together, water and prayer. All are spiritual mediums. These are customary shared rituals that are inherently restorative and healing. Offering karakia creates spiritual holding and containment, a protective covering, within the counselling relationship opening the pathway to the Puna. The rituals symbolise our kinship and our shared bond (Allen, 1999). Counsellor languaging is framed accordingly, i.e. ‘what brings us together today’ rather than ‘what would you like to discuss today’. The direction counselling moves in is not linear. The tangata leads, we follow in a spirit of whakaiti, humility (Hook et al., 2016). Whatever is live and present is what we move with. This therapeutic approach has an moment by moment in- process orientation (Cotter, 2021).
Early in the work counselling may involve tentatively exploring aspects of te ao tawhito, the old world, and te ao hurihuri, the new world, in order to clarify how this intersection of worldviews is experienced in real terms in the everyday life of the tangata (de Saxe & Trotter- Simons, 2021). This happens through the counsellor carefully tracking tangata languaging and differentially emphasising expressions, ideas and concepts relating to Te Ao Māori (Britt et al., 2014). When the tangata, hears back what is culturally significant to them, it reinforces their own self determination to integrate their own insights (Deci et al., 1994).
Māori beliefs, values and experiences (MBVE’s), provide the pou, the cultural touchstones of significance, that help orientate the counsellor (and the tangata) in understanding the phenomenology of the tangata, thereby helping shape an experience near therapeutic framing of the huarahi, the path (Pitama et al., 2017). The cultural touchstones help the tangata identify sources of resilience (Rybak et al., 2001). Houkamau and Sibley (2011) in their research, for example, confirm that higher levels of enculturation are associated with an increase in proactive preventative health behaviours, including increased social connectedness, stronger family ties, reductions in the likelihood of engaging in drug taking behaviour, and providing powerful sources of personal dignity and pride, although, at the same time raising social consciousness with associated dissatification with the socio-political status quo (Freire, 1970).
The counsellor draws from Te Ao Māori in the use of whakataukī, of maumaharatanga, memories, either directly or with some form of reframing where appropriate to contextualise contemporary issues in Indigenous terms. This is frequently spontaneous. Through shared understandings of toanga tuku iho, the treasures of the ancients, we illumine the path with one another, expressed in the whakatauakī, te rongoa tūturu o ngā tūpuna ko te kōrero, to paraphrase, healing comes through sharing our experiences with one another. This is a purposeful process of awakening, ahi kā, rekindling the flame. Re-membering who you are (Elliot, 2012). It is the direct route for addressing the soul wound (Duran, 2019).
Rangihuna et al. (2018) states that a narrative approach is well alligned with Indigenous thinking. This approach allows the archetypal stories of the Māori Gods, pūrākau, to operate as a culturally congruent form of projection through which tāngata can vicarously relate to their own personal problems and challenges in a way that is experienced from a safe distance, with the counsellor facilitating a form of verbal mirimiri, a gradual acclimatisation process. Engaging in this way enables proactive participation from the tangata in identifying thematically similar content from the pūrākau, progressively normalising their own struggles enough for self disclosure and ownership in a non-pathologising manner.
The counsellor may need to attend to a whakapapa, a history, of traumatic experiences. By whakapapa, I mean in the sense of layer upon layer (Duran, 2019). Some trauma experiences may be current, some may extend back over generations, in fact this is to be expected. Linkages to loss of tuakiritanga, need to be sensitively navigated. This is the process of whakapuaki, the conscious metabolising of traumatic experiences. Goodman and Gorski (2015) recommend an intergenerational perspective stating that it is more beneficial to focus on what has happened to a person in context, over time, rather than scrutinising the presenting problem in isolation. The authors exhort professional helpers to be cognizant of the societal context an Indigenous person is imbedded in, which may in fact be the catalytic driver of trauma, with an intergenerational basis, compounded by individual trauma ruptures experienced as discrete life events, or a series of events in present time. Restated another way, counselling for Indigenous people cannot be separated from the traumatogenic societal structures that perpetuate it (Paradies, 2016).
Whakapuaki requires empathic attunement from the counsellor which is both spoken and unspoken. This is awhi-manaaki, emotional nurturing, maternal, like a mother (Borg, 2013). A coregulatory empathically attuned emotional responsiveness to help shift highly charged emotional states into a more assimilable form. To make tolerable what is intolerable.
The western constructs in Puna, consistent with and indigenous worldview, are field theory, phenomenology and dialogue (Resnick, 1995). Field theory points to the interconnected relationship between all things, from the absolute to the relative. That all of life is connected through a series of systems within systems. The field can be thought of in quantum theory terminology, as all of creation being manifestations of energy vibrating at different intensities. A person’s energetic pulse or life essence, mauri, parallel’s this way of conceptualising (Collellmir, 2013).
Puna is a metaphor for the field (Resnick, 1995). The cosmos, time, space, history, life, all things are connected and contained within the field. The particular constellation of elements within the field a tangata imbue’s with purpose and meaning, forms their own distinctive individual experience of the field, their phenomenology, their unique, distinctive life space and experience of the world. In a counselling context, two phenomenologies meet at the contact boundary, the counsellor, and the tangata (Resnick, 1995). The contact boundary is where an organism touches the environment. In the counselling relationship this is the point where the counsellor and tangata connect interpersonally with each other. The counsellor if fully present and emotionally available can be said to be up at their contact boundary. While building the therapeutic alliance the tangata is highly likely to present with an operational self, with a persona, until such time that the core self feels safe enough to begin coming forward, becoming fully contactful over time, arriving, so to speak, with their authentic self (Winnicott, 2018).
The co-creation of the interpersonal space occurs in the dialogue. Dialogue expresses the dynamic flow of interpersonal communication occuring at the contact boundary (Resnick, 1995). When meaningful relationship connections are established, through a series of rituals, tapu is removed and the relationship becomes noa. The contact boundary is where the rongoa occurs, the healing of the spirit (Welch, 2019). In this way the process becomes transpersonal (Cortright, 1997)
Rangiwai (2021) frames three concepts which facilitate the reenculturative processes within this kaupapa, Mōhiotanga, defined as lived experience, Mātauranga, defined as acquired knowledge and Māramatanga, defined as emerging knowledge. This Intersubjective process loop is consistent with constructivist thinking (Jones-Smith, 2021). That is through sharing life journeys and tuakiritanga, a deepening sense of self slowly emerges, evolves, expands and reconstitutes within the tangata, in a series of experiential shifts, movements in ahi kā, reawakening. This is all very naturalistic and intuitive. Ahi kā has an expansive quality. It is experienced as coming home, being whole. An expansion into occupying all of your space.
Conclusion
Can a non-Māori counsellor be good enough? My sense is maybe, to a point. Ultimately tāngata Māori come to counselling and psychotherapy for healing. Many will come to non–Māori counsellors. Therapists are in a unique and influential position to ensure their delivery of counselling is tempered with understanding that Indigenous people have specific needs that can remain unspoken in a counselling relationship. If these issues are not expressly addressed by the counsellor, the dialogue will not be experience near, for either the tangata or the counsellor. This creates a climate of inauthenticity, where a tangata does not feel safe enough to be held in a way, that enables exploration of their disowned self, thus providing at best superficial solutions.
Furthermore, positioning counselling appropriately is predicated on a clear imperative to understand worldview, principally cultural identification in the context of intersectionality (de Saxe & Trotter-Simons, 2021). Tuakiritanga, specifically, elements of identity, language and culture, uniquely nuanced for each tangata, form the pou, the cultural markers of signficance, the signposts for the journey. These are the tā moko of the tangata, they symbolise all of the embodied imprints of the ancestoral knowledge that have gone before them. These ‘tā’ , imprints, can be likened to kākano, seeds, seeds of dormant potential. Given the right therapeutic environment, kākano can be nurtured to flourish, to reach toward rā, the sun. This process is inherrently re-manatising. Reminding people of who they are.
This is the kūwaha, the gateway, through which counselling enters, takes its shape and informs the therapeutic work. These kākano provide beacons of spiritual resonance, which is at the heart of Indigenous being. This is the rongoa, watering and attending to the kākano, the inherently restorative healing elements for the indigenous spirit.
Counsellors need to be clear in terms of their own positionality, expressed in a declarative dialogue with the tangata, which helps delineate points of commonality and points of divergence in worldview (Fort, 2022). This in turn facilitates an honest understanding of the breadth and depth to which a counsellor and tangata can confidently travel together. By its nature, it is a form of informed consent. The declarative dialogue by the counsellor models vulnerability. Modelling in this way paradoxically builds intimacy despite the difficult feelings this can evoke and the counter intuitive nature of the discussion. This is to whakaiti one’s self in the counselling role, the practice of cultural humility (Hook et al., 2016)
A counsellor does not neccesarily need to come from the same culture as the tangata to be effective, however, an in depth understanding of the Indigenous worldview, with respect to engagement processes, rituals, and key Indigenous concepts is essential (Durie, 2003). These understandings further need to be operationalised in applied practice. Ongoing Indigenous reflective practice through cultural supervision is vital. If you are a counsellor who works with Māori it is essential to continously reflect on your work (Tassell et al., 2012)
Puna, a reindiginisation process orientated model, seeks to address soul wounding that is a natural human response to being oppressed and marginalised, forced to operate as a false self in a world of complexity (Duran, 2019). The re-emergence of the true self, experientially, is at the heart of this approach. Knowing who you are fosters resilience (Maegan Rides At the Door & Shaw, 2023) This is the fertile ground out of which a deeply meaningful and authentic life can be cultivated.
Etymologically, the word therapy, comes from the Greek word therapeia, meaning healing. The word psychiatry comes from two other Greek words, iatros meaning healer, and psukhē, meaning soul and mind.
Both western and indigenous therapies, in this sense have the same intention, the healing the body, mind and spirit. Both have their place. Discerning where paths align and where they diverge is the art of Indigenous-centric counselling.
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Article posted 8 October 2024
Originally published in Te Tira, Volume 2, 2024, Article 1
Brent (Tohi) Tohiariki
Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Te Arawa (Tapuika). Brent (Tohi) is a psychotherapist in Otautahi, Christchurch, who is committed to creating a safe, compassionate healing environment for the exploration and recovery from deep emotional wounding.
