Genealogy (Jun 2021)

Tūhonotanga—A Māori Perspective of Healing and Well-Being through Ongoing and Regained Connection to Self, Culture, Kin, Land and Sky

  • Donny Riki Tuakiritetangata,
  • Alicia Ibarra-Lemay

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy5020055
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 2
p. 55

Abstract

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Tūhonotanga relates to one’s physical and spiritual embeddedness to the surrounding world, including to culture, to kin, and to Father Sky and Mother Earth. Kanien’kehá:ka researcher Alicia Ibarra-Lemay from the community of Kahnawà:ke, interviewed Māori psychotherapist Donny Riki from Aotearoa, to explore her practice of healing in relation to her own connections to the Ngāpuhi and the Ngāti Paoa. As granddaughter to Ina Tepapatahi, Patara Te Tuhi, Puahaere, and Haora Tipakoinaki, Donny carries the responsibility for healing in the sense of helping her people find their way back home after 186 years of colonial violence and rule in her homeland of Aotearoa. This chapter discusses the way she works with tāngata whaiora (Māori people, seekers of wellness) and how the process of healing is conceptualized in her Mãori worldview.

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