Whānau (Family) Well-Being: Reclaiming Precolonial Indigenous Māori Perspectives of Men, Fathers, and Parenting

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 2:30 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Indigenous Research in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Families and Education, Education Policy, and Initial Teacher Education (Table 6)

Abstract

Stereotypical images of Māori men and Māori masculinity, as depicted in historical colonial discourses, remain a pervasive, pathologizing narrative within contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. These pathologising narratives occur with little or no reference to traditional, pre-colonial Māori histories of Māori men or Māori masculinity. This paper presents observations about Māori parenting practices from early colonisers, that suggest a different pre-colonial parenting reality existed. The duality of these precolonial and colonial narratives, one loving the other pathologizing, backdrop the voices of contemporary Māori fathers as they reclaim and revitalize understandings and practices related to their role as loving fathers in parenting their tamariki (children) today. Dismantling racial injustice today, requires the reclamation of these understandings.

Authors

• Lesley K. Rameka, University of Waikato

• Mere Berryman, University of Waikato

• Diana Cruse, University of Waikato