Theorising Māori Health and Wellbeing in a Whakapapa Paradigm: Voices from the Margins

Whakapapa is an Indigenous metatheoretical framework; a phenomenon of metaphysical and social connections embedded in Indigenous epistemology unique to Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ). This research foregrounds the innate connection between Māori, land, health, and wellbeing as an expression of Whakapapa, nuanced through the layering of lived experience and sensemaking of 30 Māori participants, situated in dialogue with the culture-centered approach (CCA). Noting the erasure of Māori voices from the hegemonic frame of health communication in the settler colonial state, we sought to understand health and wellbeing meanings, challenges and solutions as articulated by Māori participants at the margins of Indigeneity. Drawing on the CCA approach to health communication, the manuscript highlights the relationship between Whakapapa and voice. The dialogs emergent from in-depth interviews place the CCA in dialogue with the Whakapapa paradigm, foregrounding the role of voice democracy in creating anchors to health and wellbeing among Māori, rooted in tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty). The articulations of Māori health voiced from/at the margins are offered as interventions into the large-scale health inequities experienced by Māori in Aotearoa NZ.