Mana Kaitiakitanga: Mouri Moko! Mouri Wahine! Mouri Ora! (Protective Power: Women, Skin, Carving and Life Force!)

Abstract

‘Mana Kaitiakitanga’ is an Indigenous framework of health and wellbeing centred firmly in Māori conceptualisations and understandings of our relationships to each other and to our environment. Drawing on doctoral research (Penehira, 2011), it is argued that “Mana Kaitiakitanga” provides the context in which ta moko (Māori traditional skin carving) fits naturally as a healing intervention. I share the stories of Māori women who have applied ta moko (and other forms of tattoo) in their journeys to wellness. Ta moko is an indigenous narrative that enables us to return to ancient knowledge and ways of understanding ourselves and our world. It is a process that penetrates the flesh and marks the skin; it is a process that involves both blood and pain, which may seem incongruous with healing. It is argued however that through pain comes understanding; through pain comes a RE-membering of strength; through pain comes joy; and finally through marking comes identity of who we are and how ‘well’ we have been in the past, and can be again. This work explores the intersections of identity, marginalisation, gender, education, health and wellbeing. Raising the voices of wahine Māori is critical at this time of reclamation of Māori and other Indigenous knowledges, where for too long colonisation has seen this voice silenced.