DATE: Friday 22 September, 1 pm-2 pm

(IMPORTANT: This presentation will not be recorded so we encourage you all to attend on the day!)

Our First Mothers, An exploration of Māori midwifery praxis

I am a graduate of He Waka Hiringa 2017 and will graduate with my Doctorate of Indigenous Development and Advancement from Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in March 2024.

As a Māori midwife of over 20 years, I understood fully, Māori would continue to be disadvantaged in midwifery. Change would require a shift in my perspective. I left the clinical floor and entered the educational field. I would return to the origin of midwifery, the Bachelor degree of midwifery, but, now I return as a Kaiako, with the aim of effecting change, one graduate midwife at a time.

I am honoured to share key aspects of this journey with you all.

My current plans are to continue to teach into the midwifery degree, provide resources for our ākonga Māori midwifery, through the self-publication of books, beginning with my doctoral thesis.

Click HERE to download/view pdf flyer

He uri ahau nō ngā pouwhenua o Raukawa, nō ngā hau e wha o Waikato, nō Tauranga Moana hoki.

Ko Tāpuhi taku mahi

Ko Jacqueline Martin taku ingoa.

ABSTRACT

Twenty five years of New Zealand direct entry midwifery education, five midwifery educational providers, one bicultural midwifery programme, and only 375 Māori midwives practising in the world, in 2022. Something went wrong! It would appear, the midwifery profession of New Zealand failed Māori, as midwifery students, as Māori midwives, birthing Māori women, and whānau Māori.

The purpose of this rangahau is to engage with knowledge differently, and culminated in a three tiered approach. Firstly, it returned Our First Mothers, an Indigenous midwifery philosophy of Aotearoa back into our lands, and embedded Tāpuhitanga as a counternarrative to Pākehā midwifery. Secondly, pūrākau was affirmed as the rangahau method to speak back to the imaginings of both Māori and Pākehā assumptions of the Māori midwife phenomenon. Lastly, three distinctive threads of perspectives were woven into the rangahau; te pūrākau o Te Ira Atua (collective of knowledge holders), te pūrākau o Te Ira Tūpuna (Indigenous birth workers), and, te pūrākau o Te Ira Tangata (the voices of Tihei Mauri Ora and Direct Entry midwifery graduates 1996 – 2016).

It is time we implemented our own ara of Māori midwifery to support, the recruitment and retention of the Māori midwifery student from entry level until her career is complete. Consequently, without our own ara of Māori midwifery, we will forever be at the whims and wiles of midwifery politics and the rhetoric of New Zealand society. This ranghau is my attempt to conceptualise this ara, and, I offer it here as my contribution towards the unique Māori presence in New Zealand midwifery.

Tihei Mauri Ora!