MAI Journal 2020: volume 9, issue 3

The Māori Electoral Option is a period of 4 months, every 5 years, when Māori electors can choose whether to be on the Māori or the General Electoral Roll. The outcome of the Māori Electoral Option is a key factor in determining the number of Māori seats in the New Zealand Parliament. The Electoral Commission estimates that approximately 6,000 Māori voters each year request to change electoral roll, but in 2017 over 19,000 voters applied to change.

Theatre Marae is a contemporary theatre practice unique to Aotearoa New Zealand, and this article outlines its application as an Indigenous-informed creative framework for qualitative research. As a research methodology, Theatre Marae is based in a conceptual partnership between traditional and contemporary Māori performing arts, applied theatre and the therapeutic encounter. As a form of theatre pedagogy, Theatre Marae has been applied as a decolonising strategy in ensemble work, and to craft evocative theatre that honours Māori expressions of colonisation, trauma and social justice.

Pasifika mental health continues to be a growing concern in New Zealand. This article reviews and presents online available research concerning the mental health of Pasifika in New Zealand. A comprehensive online literature search was conducted. In total, 967 online articles were identified, and 58 met the criteria to be included in the final review.

For Indigenous peoples, and Māori specifically, storytelling and oral history are crucial to the survival of our collective identities, culture and language. Retold across generations, our stories are often explicit and interwoven narratives of personal and collective memories. Drawing on Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor’s (2009) concept of “survivance stories”, this article explores a set of three oral history narratives of kaumātua from Ngāti Tiipa, one of the 33 iwi and hapū of the Waikato-Tainui confederation.