Indigenous (Māori) sexual health psychologies in New Zealand: Delivering culturally congruent sexuality education

Abstract

Indigenous (Māori) psychologies of sexual health occur at the cultural nexus of Indigenous and Western knowledge, colonising influence and intervention. Formal school-based sexuality education holds potential to intervene in this psychological space by decolonising notions of Māori sexuality, relationships and reproduction. This research utilises an Indigenous feminist (Mana Wāhine) methodology and interviews with 43 Māori participants (26 women and 17 men). We explore how Māori knowledges (mātauranga Māori), responsive to the surrounding colonising context, were interwoven through four themes: relationships, reproductive responsibility, open conversations about sexuality and contraceptive education. Indigenous knowledges can contribute to good sexual health psychologies for all.

Keywords

colonisation Indigenous psychology sexual health sexuality sexuality education

Sexual health psychologies encompass sociocultural meanings of sex, sexuality and who we are as sexual subjects. Holistic approaches to sexuality education work within the context of sexual health psychologies to normalise inclusive and safe patterns of sexual intimacies that preserve individual dignity and well-being. New Zealand sexuality education has long been required to respond to the ‘diversity of values and beliefs in the schools’ community’ (The Ministry of Education, 1999: 39). However, in the most recent study examining this, only 20 per cent of the 100 schools surveyed were inclusive of Indigenous (Māori) students, with many assuming a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to sexuality education (Education Review Office, 2007). Current policy initiatives tend to treat Māori considerations and needs as an extra ‘add on’, rather than considering the potential for Māori approaches to be utilised across the board to contribute to the development of sexuality education initiatives and improve sexual health outcomes.

Indigenous knowledge (mātauranga Māori; see appendix 1 for glossary of Māori language terms) has long been overlooked within institutional and public life (Smith, 2006). Colonising practices that have sought to assimilate Māori to Western ways of life, and define Māori in stereotyped and limiting ways, have deliberately sought to weaken cultural linkages and meanings. However, mātauranga Māori remains resilient in the lives of everyday Māori in New Zealand (Le Grice and Braun, 2016), informing contemporary Indigenous sexual psychologies. Māori sexual subjectivity, well-being and health thus occur within a historical, social and cultural context informed by both Indigenous and Western knowledge and colonising influence. Sexuality education offers a significant opportunity, as a site of intervention and praxis, to legitimate Māori concepts and meanings of sex and sexuality, subverting colonised assumptions.

Colonisation was not limited to denying Māori systems of meaning and knowledge. Through warfare and forced land sales, it effected massive Māori depopulation (from an estimate of 150,000 in 1769 to 44,000 in the early 1900s; Glover and Rousseau, 2007) instating health and socioeconomic disparities between Māori and New Zealand European (Pākehā) (Reid and Robson, 2007). This includes a disproportionate burden of sexually transmitted infections (STIs; The Institute of Environmental Science and Research Ltd, 2014). It is no coincidence that Māori have higher total fertility rates (Bascand, 2009) and begin parenting at younger ages than Pākehā (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). These indicators, of flourishing fertility among Māori, evidence cultural resistance to a history of colonial-induced depopulation (Le Grice, 2014). However, higher rates of adolescent parenting among Māori have received international attention, as an issue defined by international comparisons (Clark et al., 2016).

Colonised framings of Māori sexual health psychologies, particularly prominent in media and research, have been ‘deficit-based’, always as ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’, compared to a Pākehā implicit norm. In contrast, Pākehā are (most often) positioned as not ‘at risk’, ‘over-represented’, ‘unwanted’ and ‘unintended’ in sexual and reproductive health matters (Green, 2011). The reiteration of comparatively high rates of pregnancy, abortion and STIs among young Māori paints a negative view of their sexuality, rendering the possibility of agency, aspiration and positive future goals invisible (Green, 2011). (Historical) representations of Māori ‘savagery’ and associated notions of ‘exoticism’ and ‘promiscuity’ continue to inform colonising deficit assumptions about Māori parenting (Le Grice, 2014), and explanations for Māori sexual and reproductive health outcomes (Reid, 2004). These negative constructions of Māori sexuality bear similarity to ‘people of colour’ in the United States who are considered to be sexually promiscuous and not deemed responsible in reproductive decisions or mothering (Silliman et al., 2004).

This sociocultural context produces particular challenges and opportunities for intervention through sexuality education. Some Māori families report difficulty providing informal sexuality education to young people (Rimene et al., 1998), and discussions about contraception with daughters are feared to promote promiscuity or early sexual relationships by some Māori mothers (Manihera and Turnbull, 1990) which is unsurprising in the contexts of negative discourses of Māori sexuality. Māori language immersion schools approach discussions about sexuality education alongside acknowledging the impact colonisation has had on shaping understandings of Māori sexuality (Levine and Green, 2006). This aligns with approaches to reproductive justice (e.g. Chrisler, 2012) – addressing how matters of race, ethnicity, indigeneity and gender can constrain reproductive decision-making (Silliman et al., 2004) – equipping students with further resources to advocate for their rights and those of others. In a Native American context, the inclusion of cross-cultural materials that cohere with Indigenous values has allowed Indigenous students to feel empowered and connected with their cultural beliefs, leading to delayed sexual activity and greater contraceptive adherence (Stephens et al., 2012).

A holistic, rounded approach to sexuality education could further draw from mātauranga Māori and Māori ontologies, ways of knowing that interlink materiality, psychology and spirituality (Smith et al., 2016). Understanding woman’s reproductive embodiment and alignment with the moon and the earth (Moewaka Barnes, 2010), divine interpretations of menstruation (Murphy, 2011) and status as sacred (tapu; Moewaka Barnes, 2010). Indigenous scholars (including Māori) have further suggested that sexuality education could be taught through the broader context of reproduction, an awareness of our social environment (Waetford, 2008), our sense of belonging through sexual and cultural identities, individual life aspirations (Newbold and Willinsky, 2009) and family aspirations (Hiroti, 2011).

New Zealand, with a current review and revitalisation of the sexuality education curriculum (Education Review Office, 2016), offers a context where mātauranga Māori could practically inform new directions and initiatives. We support the mandate outlined by Te Whāriki Takapou (2017), a collaborative Māori sexual and reproductive health promotion and research organisation, that ‘Mātauranga Māori-based sexuality education should be a core component of the curriculum for all rangatahi (youth) attending Māori and English-medium schools’. We fully support such efforts to decolonise Māori sexual health psychologies through sexuality education curriculum. In this study, we explore examples of Māori sexual health psychologies informed by mātauranga Māori and ask what areas of mātauranga Māori can we legitimate and what areas of colonising assumptions can we deconstruct, in the provision of good quality sexuality education?

Methodology

The research reported here is part of a wider qualitative interview study on Māori and reproduction (Le Grice, 2014), undertaken by the first author (J.L.G.), a Māori woman, using a Mana Wāhine (Māori feminist) research methodology (Irwin, 1992; Le Grice, 2014; Pihama, 2001; Simmonds, 2009, 2011). Mana Wāhine research privileges Māori women’s analyses and aspirations, seeking to decolonise historical and contemporary colonial interpretations about Māori (Pihama, 2001). It also seeks to maintain congruence between theoretical development with women’s diverse and intergenerational lived experiences, practices and community engagement ‘on the ground’ and directly speak to areas of society, culture and policy where change can occur (Le Grice, 2014). This work was supported by the second author (V.B.) who is Pākehā.

To give some insight into my (J.L.G.’s) background, and contextualise how I have produced this knowledge, I was raised in rural Hokianga in the far north of New Zealand, until I was 6 years old, and then in urban Mairangi Bay in Auckland with my mother, who is Māori, father, who is Pākehā, and younger brother. I went to a high school in a high socioeconomic area, where Māori were a minority. I remember my mum having a kind, thoughtful but frank initial ‘sex’ talk around the same time as I unpicked some of the flaws in the adult logic of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, when I was 5 or 6 years. I never felt I could not talk to my mum about sex, but it was still an awkward subject and often indirectly referenced with humour. Popular cultural references, particularly those by African American singers who held some resemblance to us as Māori, were often held a space for ongoing sexuality discussion. As a young teenager, musician ‘Shaggy’ singing an unreservedly positive account of his ‘talked up’ sexuality through ‘Boombastic’ was a source of fun, while ‘Salt-N-Pepa’s’ more explicit song ‘Let’s talk about sex, baby’ was met with some discomfort and a ‘turn it off’ response from dad. While mum was unquestionably supportive of same-sex attraction, it took mum and me a number of years to develop the same ethos in dad. Learning about periods at Intermediate school was interesting, but slightly too late for those of us already blessed with early development. So too was high school sexuality education around contraception demonstrated by our guidance counsellor illustrating the application of a condom to a wooden stick and introducing students to the abject horror of STIs through an illustrated reference.

In this study, we decided to explore the phenomena of sexuality education through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, due to the capacity of qualitative research to generate rich and detailed descriptions of meaning and experience (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). Qualitative data were derived from individual semi-structured interviews that allowed us to explore participants’ accounts of their everyday lives, ideals, values, challenges and aspirations and how they were drawing on, or resisting, Māori and Anglo-European (Western) orientations. Interviews were conducted by J.L.G., with questions designed to focus on participants’ reproductive histories and orient the interviewee to reflect on their experiences with reproduction, babies and sexual and reproductive health. Interviews lasted between 20 minutes and more than 2 hours, with an average of 1 hour. Participants were given the opportunity to have the interviews at the university, the interviewer’s home, their home, workplace or community facility. The audio recordings of these interviews were transcribed according to an orthographic style (Lapdat and Lindsay, 1999), and J.L.G. cross-checked the recordings and transcripts for accuracy. Care was taken to preserve analytically key elements of participants’ accounts, while elements distracting from the analytic intent were removed (Sandelowski, 1994). Pauses in participants’ talk are denoted by their length, noting how many seconds they lasted in brackets within the sequence of conversation (e.g. 1.0). Extra contextualising information, or anonymised material, is added to participant quotes in square brackets (e.g. participants’ friend).

In all, 43 Māori participants (26 women and 17 men) were recruited through advertising, word of mouth within personal networks and the assistance of two Māori recruiters. We sought views from participants who culturally identified as Māori, but represented a diverse experience of that. Recruiters were given direction on specific ages, gender, parenting statuses, occupational statuses and sexual identities we required to meet these objectives. The participants ranged in age from 22 to 80 years, with a mean of 48.5 years and varied in parenting statuses (35 parents and 8 child-free) and sexual identity (40 heterosexual and 3 non-heterosexual). We interviewed people from different Māori tribal regions, acknowledging some tribal variation in colonisation histories, knowledge traditions and practice and a mix of rural (13) and urban (27) residents. However, as our recruiters were from iwi in Northland, with Auckland urban connections, there is a predominance of Ngāpuhi accounts, particularly within the Hokianga region. We also recruited participants from a range of occupational statuses (5 were unemployed, 5 were students, 5 were stay-at-home parents, 26 were working and 7 had retired). Participants’ names, the names of people they spoke about, locations, workplaces or further specific identity details have been removed and are referred to generically. Demographic information, including the participants’ occupation, gender and age range, is reported alongside participant quotes to contextualise their responses. Ethical approval was obtained from the host university’s ethics committee in 2007, and ethical guidelines for Indigenous research were engaged with throughout the study (Hudson et al., 2010; Smith, 2006).

Using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2012), we examine foregrounded considerations for Māori sexuality education, attending to how this may be informed by mātauranga Māori, as well as colonising influence(s). We attend to these descriptions located within participants’ talk as live organic material that actively shapes and re-creates social worlds. This was done through a mix of inductive and deductive analytic approaches (Braun and Clarke, 2012) and followed the six phases Braun and Clarke outline. After becoming familiarised with the data and generating initial codes, relevant conceptual cultural constructs anchored in Māori language pertaining to reproduction were systematically searched through the data (see Le Grice, 2014 for how these were identified). Potential themes were drawn from the data, and interconnecting ideas within them were collapsed into broader themes, with similarities reviewed and honed into distinctive sub-themes. Through the writing process, themes and sub-themes underwent further review and refinement in relation to the foregrounded themes of relationships, reproductive responsibility, working with variations in openness about sexuality and contraceptive education, attending to how these provide key considerations for sexuality education that is responsive to mātauranga Māori and the impacts of a colonising context.

Analysis

Key aspects of sexuality education were emphasised across participant accounts: relationships, reproductive responsibility, open conversations about sexuality and contraceptive education (Table 1).

Table 1.

Sexual health psychologies and mātauranga Māori.

Māori sexual health psychology theme	Mātauranga Māori
Relationships	• Relationships are understood as multidimensional and considered in relation to spiritual, ecological and human domains (e.g. atua, tangata, whenua). • Relationships involve an acknowledgement of one another’s sacredness (e.g. notion of tapu). • Sexual relationships are situated within this broader understanding of relationships. • Sex, gender and sexuality are flexible, fluid, inclusive and facilitate belonging (e.g. notion of raho). • Sex, gender and sexuality are non-categorical and disrupt the privilege of heterosexuality.
Reproductive responsibility	• Sex is a taonga, linked to the cultural significance of reproduction (e.g. whenua ki te whenua). • Sex is considered in context with life and whānau aspirations and aspirations for future children. • Children can be an impetus to responsibility.
Open conversations about sexuality	• Māori art forms and performance are rich in sexualised depictions and metaphors. • Sex is life-affirming and positive, often discussed with humour. • Talking about sex is not tapu, both women and men can talk about sex without judgement. • Cultures of secrecy and silence around sexuality are antagonistic to learning.
Contraceptive education	• Using contraception reinforces care, respect and protection of a partner. • Using contraception is characteristic of a lover with good technique. • Considering sex as a taonga engages positive sexual agency and a discourse of erotics. • Considering sex as a taonga disrupts the notion of young people’s sexuality as inherently ‘risky’.

Relationships

Both Western and contemporary Māori literature that advocates teaching ethical and respectful relationships in sexuality education is well established (Carmody, 2004; Glover et al., 2008; Ollis et al., 2013; The Ministry of Health cited in Te Puāwai Tapu, 2004). Situating a multidimensional and continuous notion of relationships, as they are understood in relation to mātauranga Māori, requires broadening the discussion beyond sexual relationships. Māori ontologies pertaining to reproduction bring about deeper considerations for how we relate in spiritual and ecological ways (Le Grice and Braun, 2016) and diverse understandings of attraction and desire in human relationships. This mātauranga Māori was elaborated by a Māori man and teacher:

The coming together of sacredness to another and that may not necessarily be a sexual act, or intimate act that may be the friendship that you and I are sharing as we talk about it, you know? Tapu to tapu. Sacredness to sacredness. That may be in the friendship that will develop with my children, with my uncles, aunties, grandparents, brothers and sisters as we come together sacredly in a friendship …. You can even take that further towards your relationship you have with your maunga (ancestral mountain) …. It’s been really opened towards the development of relationships and … the dynamics um that that involves. (Educator, man, 40 years)

This participant described a nuanced approach to considering sexuality in relation to the mātauranga Māori concept of tapu. While he directly translated this to the term ‘sacredness’, a deeper meaning of tapu conveys a careful pattern of engagement with land, humans and the atua (spiritual deities) to ensure all dimensions are enhanced, sustained, restored and empowered by the relationship (Tate, 2010). Teaching about tapu within relationships more broadly than sexual relationships allows young people to draw upon their prior knowledge and skill. His strategy also places emphasis upon the prior knowledge and skills that young people have, allowing new knowledge about (and experience with) sexual relationships to be scaffolded by this frame. This is consistent with both past and contemporary Māori literature that considers human, spiritual and ecological elements to be integrated in mātauranga Māori (Jahnke, 2002; Tate, 2010). Further extending the notion of relationships as multidimensional and continuous, fluidity in sexual attraction was described by a Māori woman researcher who deconstructed one of my untested assumptions about relationships in the demographic questionnaire.

Researcher:

And what is your sexuality?

Participant:

Well that’s a very difficult question. (laughing) Because I think that I mean I see sexuality on a continuum and I think that the idea that you need to categorise like heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual is actually kind of western concept that um my raho, sexuality is sexuality. And that people would be attracted to different people at different times in their lives. Some people might be more attracted to women and more attracted to men but that sexuality was expressed in diverse forms. (Researcher, 50 years)

In this account, the participant disputed the use of ‘sexuality’ as a linguistic category to define sexual desire, in relation to terms such as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and takatāpui, a Māori notion that captures this gendered and sexual diversity. Instead, she positioned the concept of sexual desire as less bounded and restrictive than a categorical approach would allow and located this with the concept of raho, which contains more diverse opportunities for desire and attraction. Raho also translates to both testicles and labia majora, a non-binary notion of biological sex that encapsulates genital diversity. Sourcing a notion of sexual attraction from this non-binary basis point, in this Māori woman researcher’s account, fluidity is assumed, legitimated and normal, informing a counterpoint to deterministic and restrictive biological essentialism. This resonates with the contemporary Māori literature that has critiqued colonising discourses about sexuality for the way they draw upon binaries that reify a perception of ‘normal’ and ‘other’, instead advocating for an approach that allows for more inclusive fluid and flexible identity positions over a lifetime (Aspin and Hutchings, 2007; Pihama, 2001). By not differentiating between ‘normal’ and ‘other’, all people have access to the concept and space of belonging in contemporary Māori models of sexuality (The Ministry of Health cited in Te Puāwai Tapu, 2004). Acknowledging sexual feelings irrespective of gender, and not occluding this by heterosexist influence and prejudice, offers a culturally congruent way of working with Māori. Working outside a categorical framing that privileges heterosexuality also counters dominant Western heterosexism, where heterosexuality is presumed as the default position, also problematised in the Western literature (Brickell, 2001; Peel, 2001). Sexuality education initiatives that prepare young people to be informed, confident and respectful in relationships, offer congruence with contemporary mātauranga Māori.

Reproductive responsibility

Reproduction is a practice of cultural rather than just personal significance for Māori (Glover et al., 2008; Hiroti, 2011; Le Grice and Braun, 2016; Turia, 2004). Sexuality education taught in context with life aspirations (Newbold and Willinsky, 2009), foregrounding considerations for reproductive responsibility following (penile vaginal penetrative) heterosex without contraception, offers a culturally congruent approach. One Māori elder man described reproductive responsibility in relation to a view of sexuality as a taonga (treasure). ‘I always say that um (1.0) you know their generation (1.0) … they’ve got to use protection now … It’s a taonga in itself’ (elder, man, 40 years). Another Māori man, sexual health educator, Taane Thomas, described a workshop he ran to facilitate reproductive responsibility within a culturally resonant framework:

I give them um a kete (woven basket) …. If they were to ever have a child, each of them have to draw a life journey of that child … (after) two days it takes, um they all stand up and intimately share with the group um no outsiders are listening … coming to the end of my workshop and um I say ‘well these kete are … yours to take home and um um I want you to hang them on your wall so you can see, you can see it every day … if you’re going to go to an area where there’s going to be alcohol or if you think your defences may be just dropping a little bit or if this is going to be the night that you’ve chosen to be with um your partner um when are you ready to bring that story to life that you shared with us and when are you ready to put the placenta of your first child in that kete, because these kete are used to hold your placenta for your first child so you can continue to do this ceremony of your ancestors’.

By gifting workshop participants with a kete, used in the Māori practice of returning a baby’s placenta and afterbirth to ancestral homelands, Taane’s approach to reproductive responsibility is located fully within mātauranga Māori. Noting this as a traditional practice of the participants’ ancestors alludes to the significance and meaning of reproduction in the context of traditional mātauranga Māori and encourages participants to understand it beyond Western framings and take it seriously. An effective mechanism of this intervention involved pairing the young people’s ideals for their children with their present circumstances and asking them to consider this in the choices they make in their contemporary lives. Offering particular congruence for contemporary Māori, as having the potential to incorporate an awareness of how reproduction and parenting can be an impetus to responsibility, and requiring a shift towards more responsible and ‘boring’ identities, as well as the implications of parenting in the context of mātauranga Māori (Le Grice, 2014), this framework for sexuality education may be useful to all.

Open conversations about sexuality

Mātauranga Māori pertaining to sexuality education may be evidenced in the physical and linguistic landscape of Māori spaces such as marae – cultural forms, carvings, performance of haka and everyday talk. However, initiating informal discussions about sexuality with young people was not always easy (Rimene et al., 1998), and for some, Christian understandings of sexuality informed notions of mātauranga Māori.

For instance, sex was frequently discussed with positivity and affirmation:

I think we (Māori) (2.0) um acknowledge that sexuality is part of who we are and something that’s fun and enjoyable … If you look at a lot of our haka (war dances) which are very sexual and our carvings which are very sexually explicit … I remember sitting at the marae (community centre) with Nannies who’d be sitting there peeling their potatoes and … they’d be going (1.0) oh ‘I’d better go home and visit my husband’. And you’d go ‘why Nanny?’ And they’d go ‘oh he’ll be missing me, he’ll be hungry’ and you know damned well she’s not talking about his puku (stomach) and you know, there was all this kind of banter and joking-ness and kind of playfulness around sex. (Researcher, woman, 30 years)

This Māori woman researcher described her Nannies’ ‘playful’ banter about sexuality, pitched at a level that partially obscured its full meaning, but also allowing it to retain an ordinary and positive status. This account aligns with contemporary research that has suggested mātauranga Māori is often taught with humour (Le Grice, 2014), and sexuality is discussed with humour in Māori language (Penehira, 2012). Similarly, the participants’ descriptions of carved artworks that contain genital depictions, and the sexual explicitness of haka, set a scene whereby sexuality is set in the background of ordinary Māori cultural life. Traditional literature suggests that sexual symbolism was a mundane part of everyday life (Biggs, 1960), representing highly prized future descendants (Rimene et al., 1998). The openness about women’s sexual desire in this account also aligns with Western New Zealand research that advocates an inclusion and acknowledgement of women’s sexual desire in sexuality education, equipping all young people with a sense of ‘positive sexual agency’ (Allen, 2005).

However, openness about sexuality was not observed in all accounts. A Māori woman elder participant stated ‘Sex was actually quite a ah tapu part to talk about, you know, and so we never spoke about sex with our mother’ (elder, woman, 50 years) – a starkly different construction of sexuality, and one aligned with Christian sexual discourse from colonisation, which has contributed to shaping a view that sexuality discussions are tapu (Aspin and Hutchings, 2007) consistent with accounts from Pacific Island cultures (Greenwood and Cowley, 2003). With sexuality discussions understood as tapu, a barrier to speaking and eliciting knowledge about sexuality is formed. Recommendations for families to have informal discussions about sexuality with young people, to protect the sexual and reproductive health of the family, can be complicated by the suggestion that sexuality conversations are not culturally appropriate for Māori (Rimene et al., 1998) and a culture of secrecy and silence around sexuality. These conditions could contribute to circumstances of unwanted pregnancy, abortion or suicide (Greenwood and Cowley, 2003). Decolonising these assumptions, by speaking to the influence of colonisation on Māori cultural ways of being and practices, and presenting evidence for cultural celebration of sexuality (Aspin, 2005) become crucial elements of culturally responsive sexuality education praxis.

Contraceptive education

In a holistic approach to sexuality education, teaching about contraception could draw upon many forms of mātauranga Māori we have described. It could be done in a way that emphasises the sacredness of another through a healthy openness about sexuality. A Māori woman clinician described how some of these elements could be interwoven:

Sex is a normal healthy beautiful part of our lives, how do we do it and protect each other … if it’s just a quick bonk then, you know, how do you protect people? …. As well as having the technique … (1.0) actually part of being a good lover is being respectful of your (1.0) your lovers and making sure that they’re safe and that you’re safe …. Rather than (1.0) put a condom on your penis so you don’t get a sexually transmitted infection, you know? Who cares about that really and most people don’t when you’re in the sort of, middle of something really fun and exciting. (Clinician, woman, 30 years)

Rather than advocate for condom use due to a concern about sexual risk, this (clinician) participant advocated condom use situated within a broader context of care, respect and protection of a sexual partner. Messages about condom use need to be pitched through a meaningful emotional tone for young people to understand, process and resource. This coalesces with ‘ethical’ (Western; Carmody, 2004; Ollis et al., 2013) sexuality education agendas around teaching young people about ethical sexual relationships (Glover et al., 2008). However, this participant’s account contains a further strategy, pairing the use of contraceptives with the qualities of a ‘good lover’, bringing about implications for positive identity and good sexual technique through contraceptive use. Aligning with prior accounts that describe sex as a ‘taonga’, this offers an engagement with a ‘discourse of erotics’ or sense of ‘positive sexual agency’ that has often been absent from current sexuality education in the Western literature (Allen, 2005). It also disrupts an approach to sexuality education that positions young people as prone to ‘risky’ behaviour, also problematised in the Western literature (Macleod, 2011).

Discussion

Sexuality education is vital for equipping young people with the necessary information and skills to make informed sexual and reproductive decisions that align with their life aspirations (Newbold and Willinsky, 2009). In this study, we have provided clear examples of how mātauranga Māori can inform sexuality education interventions across four domains: relationships, reproductive responsibility, sexual openness and contraceptive education.

In our analyses, we have provided tangible descriptions of how sexuality may be understood through specific accounts of mātauranga Māori. This has included understanding sexuality as a taonga – something significant and precious; the notion of raho – as an inclusive way of understanding attraction and normalised sex, gendered and sexual diversity; and reading the physical landscape of Māori spaces as an educative context, for depictions of sexuality in carvings and performing arts. It also includes the ways in which we negotiate how we understand the inherent dignity and tapu of our reproductive bodies (Moewaka Barnes, 2010; Murphy, 2011) and respect the dignity and tapu of those we engage within sexual relationships much like we do with our friendships, relationships and attachments to the natural environment.

A holistic approach to sexual and reproductive health that attends to the aspirations of all, in sexuality education, can draw and resource from mātauranga Māori. The intervention, Kete Whenua, described earlier by one participant, offers a clear opportunity for reproductive responsibility (Waetford, 2008) to be highlighted in a way that is contextualised with individual life aspirations (Newbold and Willinsky, 2009) and family aspirations (Hiroti, 2011), aspirations which are both nationally and culturally situated. This could prompt discussions about how parents might respond to circumstances of unplanned pregnancy, parenting and abortion including culturally derived solutions. Māori-designed interventions, such as Kete Whenua, offer a means of weaving and interconnecting various Māori cultural values together (sometimes with Pākehā ones), to produce sexuality education interventions that are meaningful, affectively moving and capable of sparking young minds with possibility, insight and wisdom.

As we have described, deconstructing views of sexuality discussions as tapu as well as other external and negative sexual and reproductive discourses about Māori would also be an important inclusion in sexuality education. This is vital to open up the prospect and possibility for informal conversations about sex and sexuality to occur that facilitate educative goals for sexual health and well-being. Taking heed of our pedagogical approaches to teaching in the context of care and humour (Le Grice, 2014), including the way in which this is normalised when talking about sexuality in te reo Māori (Penehira, 2012), also can usefully inform an affectively congruent approach – that invites a warm, supportive and light-hearted emotional tone for discussions to occur. Engaging with discourses of erotics, positive sexual agency (Allen, 2005) and the notion of sexuality as a taonga, where appropriate and can usefully and strategically infuse meanings of sexually safe practices such as contraception usage, is also validated as culturally congruent practice by our study.

Conclusion

Indigenous (Māori) sexual health psychologies in New Zealand, informed by mātauranga Māori, offer innovative approaches to decolonised sex, gender, sexuality, relationships, reproduction, sexual conversations and sexual health. Understanding human life as it is contextualised and embedded within multiple dimensions of spiritual, material landforms, social formations anchored in language and relationships to one another brings forth Māori ontologies and ways of knowing beyond colonising ‘regimes of truth’ and sense-making that support and maintain the privileges of some over others.

This article provides clear articulations of mātauranga Māori, evidenced in mundane and routine aspects of everyday life and formal sexuality education practice, the intersections of which provide an innovative approach to the area of Indigenous (Māori) sexual health psychology in New Zealand. Drawing upon mātauranga Māori can enhance the cultural congruence of sexuality education for Māori and provide a method of highlighting positive depictions of Māori sexuality, negating the usual deficit focus of Māori as constitutive of sexual and reproductive health ‘problems’ – instead situating Māori cultural frameworks as part of the solution to the challenge of sexuality education for reproductive well-being. We would argue these concepts also hold applicability to people from other cultures – especially but not only people from cultures who are marginalised, colonised or otherwise denied self-determining psychologies through their cultural knowledge forms and ideologies. We advocate for all school-based sexuality education to include conversations about the impact of colonisation in shaping assumptions about Māori sexuality, as has already been established in Māori language immersion schools (Levine and Green, 2006).

Future research on Māori sexuality education could attend to Māori young people’s accounts of sexuality education needs, how Māori whānau can initiate and sustain supportive informal sexuality education discussions, how sexuality education can be responsive to young Māori people’s gendered and sexually fluid realities, and the ways that online forms of knowledge exchange can be synthesised with mātauranga Māori. Further work could engage Māori methodologies such as pūrākau (Lee, 2009) and wairua (Moewaka Barnes et al., 2017) to more comprehensively explore a broader range of possibilities for Māori ontologies and epistemologies to inform sexual health psychologies.

Footnotes

Appendix 1: Glossary of Māori terms

Atua: divine source, god

Haka: war dance

Kete: a weaved basket

Mana Wāhine research: an approach that privileges the perspectives and protocols of Māori women

Mātauranga Māori: Indigenous knowledge

Maunga: ancestral mountain

Pākehā: New Zealander with European ancestry

Puku: stomach

Raho: sexuality, genitals

Takatāpui: Māori person who is queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or transsexual.

Taonga: treasure, something prized

Tapu: in a special state

Tikanga: the correct way of doing something

Acknowledgements

J.L.G. would like to thank Taane Thomas and all participants who shared their knowledge and accounts of their practice for this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: J.L.G. received funding support from the Auckland Medical Aid Trust to develop this article and doctoral scholarship funding from the University of Auckland.

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