Kia tutuki ai ngā whainga me ngā tumanako kia mau tonu i ngā mahi
Through working together our goals and objectives will be achieved
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Kia tutuki ai ngā whainga me ngā tumanako kia mau tonu i ngā mahi
Through working together our goals and objectives will be achieved
Join here
Poutama seminars provide learning steps that embrace Māori knowledge, promote Māori Health and create linkages to the growing diversity of interventions utilised within social/mental health communities in Aotearoa. These marae-based seminars provide excellent professional development opportunities for a wide range of professionals.
Presented by: Anna Fleming and Verity Armstrong
ARO-HA: Reclaiming Māori Gender and Sexuality within Indigenous Psychotherapy
Abstract: The Māori word aroha is often translated as 'love', but a deeper meaning – to pay close attention to the breath of another – is central to ideas of indigenous healing/psychotherapy.
Māori psychotherapists Verity Armstrong (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) and Anna Fleming (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Tūhoe) will present on their clinical work and thinking around how pre-colonial Māori society held a rich and accepting view of sexual and gender diversity, and how this was deliberately eroded by colonial legislation and missionary practices.
Drawing from traditional purakau (stories) and their own clinical experience, Verity and Anna will discuss the experience of decolonising gender and sexual identities alongside their tāngata whaiora (clients). They will demonstrate how the process of showing aroha – a deep, therapeutic focus on the other – can powerfully guide this journey, enabling individuals to reclaim and express their authentic selves.
This presentation offers a vital perspective on indigenous psychotherapy, decolonisation, and the profound impact of connecting with culture.
Ngā hiahia ai ki te tīmatanga ā ka kite ai tātou i te mutunga. You must understand the beginning if you wish to see the end.
Anna Fleming
Anna Fleming’s (she/her/ia) whakapapa connects her to Ngāti Hine and Tūhoe through her mother and to England through her father. She has worked in social services for over 20 years, spending the last decade practicing as a psychotherapist in Tāmaki Makaurau, primarily working with whānau Māori through tertiary health services, private practice and ACC Sensitive Claims. Anna is also a Lecturer in the Department of Psychotherapy and Counselling at Auckland University of Technology and works across both the Graduate Diploma and Masters programmes. Her clinical practice and academic mahi is supported and informed by indigenous models of health care, social justice movements and the work of Māori clinicians in establishing a kaupapa Māori based psychotherapy in Aotearoa. In 2024, alongside Verity Armstrong, Anna founded Awatea Therapy, a kaupapa Māori therapy practice comprising psychotherapists, counsellors and creative arts therapists based in Mauinaina (Panmure), Tāmaki Makaurau. Anna is a partner to her hoa rangatira, a Māmā of twins, and lives with her whānau in Ukutoia (Glen Innes).
Verity Armstrong
Verity Armstrong is a wahine from Kāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe, a Māmā and relational psychotherapist. She is informed by the increasing body of kaupapa Māori research done by indigenous psychotherapists. In her psychotherapeutic practice within Aotearoa, she is also inspired by feminist, anti-racist, and queer movements for social justice. She is developing her spiritual beliefs based on te ao Māori and a sense of our place and interconnection with te ao mārama. An experience that resonates for Verity within her whakapapa is disconnection and reconnection. She relates to this in her work, exploring with clients and in her reflections, ways to reconnect to self, others, and the natural and supernatural world. While Verity’s whakapapa is from Te Waipounamu, she lives in Titirangi, her kainga aroha, in Tāmaki Makaurau. She has worked as a social worker and now as a psychotherapist at Awatea Therapy in Mauinaina.
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Enquiries to: wakaoranga2007@gmail.com
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