Mahi a Atua: The Art of Liberating Minds

Mind-set liberation is critical to transforming the racist systems within which we live. Although we may understand injustices resulting from colonisation, including how the racist ideology of psychology has indoctrinated Indigenous imaginations, becoming critically conscientised to how we as Indigenous health practitioners perpetuate institutional and systemic racism is vital. Informed by Kaupapa Māori theory, this paper describes how Rangi Parauri training acts as a creative, liberatory praxis which moves practitioners beyond limited understandings of racism towards collective and embodied sense-making in which practitioners are able to simultaneously heal from, resist, act against, and transform systems that uphold racism. As our minds are liberated and we grow in order to remain curious and in relationship with each other, profoundly different, limitless possibilities for whānau to discover their own hīnātore emerge.