Whatuora: Whatu kākahu and living as Māori women

Abstract

Māori women play a vital role in enabling our children and grandchildren to live secure, positive cultural identities ‘as Māori’. In utero we surround our children in a protective kahu (meaning cloak and also amniotic sac) and after they enter the world we continue to ‘cloak’ them in tangible and abstract ways with our values, beliefs and aspirations. Of the multiple aspirations that Māori women hold for ourselves and our whānau to be healthy, happy and ‘whole’, this research concerns itself with Māori women’s aspirations to ‘live as Māori’ – understood as living a full and holistically well life, connected to people and places, and able to participate confidently in both te ao Māori and the global world. A qualitative project grounded in Kaupapa Māori and Mana Wāhine theory, this study explores the stories of eight Māori women – including myself as researcher. As I taught the women to weave traditionally-made Māori cloaks, they told stories of reclaiming, restoring and revisioning ‘living as Māori’ for themselves and their whānau. A ‘new’ Kaupapa Māori methodology emerged from the ‘old’ practice of whatu as a theorised decolonising methodology for this project – a research approach I name Whatuora. The methods and methodology developed here offer a way to think about the transforming changes Māori women create through our deliberate and conscious actions to live ‘as Māori’. Collectively our stories give voice to Māori women’s work to reclaim and revision Māori ways of being, while Whatuora methodology forwards a unique approach to research that intertwines Mana Wāhine theory, Māori creative practice and Māori and Indigenous methodologies into an interwoven set of ideas and theory.