Whakapapa, Mauritau, and Placefulness to Decolonise Indigenous Minds

This article explores the relationship between genealogy and the environment as a pathway towards decolonising indigenous minds. In Māori worldviews, everything is categorised, organised, and understood through whakapapa, or genealogy. Whakapapa resides within the land and water, safeguarding ancestral stories as they weave through time, space, and place. The environment serves as a powerful tool for maintaining, reclaiming, and reinforcing indigeneity. Strengthening the connections between whakapapa and the environment offers significant avenues for decolonising Indigenous minds, by recalibrating and releasing colonised ways of being to embody mauritau (mindfulness) through whenua kura (placefulness). Unlike Cartesian dualism, which separates the body and mind, the Māori conception of the mind is multifaceted and embodied. The mind is thought to be situated in the solar plexus, emotions in the gut, and connection to spirit in the head, all of which are deeply rooted in whakapapa and the enduring ties to ancestors and place. Whakapapa’s connections to the land, water, animals, and spiritual entities are imbued with narratives that aid in recollection and provide profound cultural context to place. These narratives offer pathways for communion with the land and water, enabling sensitivity to environmental cues, such as changing seasons, solstices, moon phases, star cycles, and natural rhythms within our inner landscapes of body, heart, and mind, fostering a sense of placefulness.