Book Launch | Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Maori Healing and Psychiatry

You are warmly invited to the launch of Wiremu Niania and Dr. Allister Bush’s second book, Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Māori Healing and Psychiatry, also authored by David Epston. This is a free event and is open for all to attend. We ask that you register your attendance for catering.

EFTpos is available as well as cash to purchase books.

Authors available for book signing.

Doors open from 5.30pm

Register here

ABOUT THE BOOK

Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Māori Healing and Psychiatry explores what it means to hear voices and see visions from the perspectives of Māori healer Wiremu NiaNia and psychiatrist Allister Bush. Wiremu explains Ngā Kūaha as referring to doorways and offers entranceways into Māori knowledge about wairua (spirituality) handed down by his forebears and other Māori sources.

The authors provide historical examples of Western mystical experiences and contrasting Western psychiatric and psychological explanations of voices and visions as hallucinations. Further chapters focus on narratives and perspectives from people who have experienced voices and visions, and have had interactions with mental health services, told from multiple viewpoints; individual, whānau (family), Māori healing and psychiatry. The benefits of joint Māori healing and psychiatry approaches on wellbeing are examined. Drawing on their 18-year partnership Wiremu and Allister highlight the harmful colonial impact of psychiatry in suppressing Māori views of voices and visions. They describe ways of working together in clinical practice to address this history of injustice and how to identify whether distressing perceptual experiences may represent Māori cultural experiences, psychiatric or psychological symptoms or all of these.

This book advocates for practices that enable genuine partnerships between Māori healers, other wairua practitioners, and mental health clinicians in order to improve the mental health and spiritual care of Māori and perhaps other peoples.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Wiremu Niania, born in 1949 and of Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Kahungunu, Tūhoe descent, was adopted into the Niania whānau in Tiniroto. Raised by his kuia, Te Awhimate Niania, he displayed spiritual awareness from a young age, guided closely in mahi wairua practice.

Apprenticed to his kuia, who was considered a tohunga, Wiremu assisted with mahi wairua from his teenage years. Besides his spiritual journey, he has diverse life experiences, including work as a shearer, fencer, scrubcutter, musician, songwriter, Māori activist, and youth worker.

In 1999, Wiremu studied Mental Health with Indigenous Training and Consultants, later joining the Māori cultural therapy team in Gisborne Hospital’s mental health unit. His unique approach to mental health and spiritual distress earned him a role as a cultural therapist at Te Whare Mārie, Specialist Māori mental health service, until 2010.

Collaborating with Allister Bush, Wiremu authored Tātaihono: Stories of Māori Healing and Psychiatry, winning the Ashton Wylie Book Award in 2014.  A sought-after presenter, he speaks globally on topics like traditional healing in clinical settings.

Allister Bush, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Te Whare Mārie, Māori Mental Health Service and Pasifika CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service), Te Whatu Ora, Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand.

David Epston, Co-originator of Narrative Therapy, Tāmaki-makau-rau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.