Sexual Abuse in Australia and New Zealand, 2016, 7(1): 4-17

This article elaborates a pedagogy of decolonising healing and recovery undertaken as part of research work into the political and historical contextualisation of intergenerational sexual violation. Specifically, the work is an articulation of the politics of interpersonal violence impacting Māori whanau in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Contextualising interpersonal sexual violation in this
context requires a focus on colonisation’s impact vis-à-vis the breakdown of systems of social control, changes to the family, and shifts in gender relations precipitated through loss of proximity to land and collective/public modes of living. The work of healing is herein re-scripted through the processes of contextualising—most especially through making explicit connections to the theft of land occurring several generations prior and continuing into present time. Through contextualisation healing is experienced as a ‘coming to know’ in totality—across time and multiple generations. In this way the approach moves the focus re ‘what happened’ beyond the interpersonal and beyond the body. Through storying the history of raupatu/ confiscation and forced migration/homelessness in the author’s own whānau, the work demonstrates how shifts in our relationship to land change how we relate to each other and lay the foundation for cycles of intergenerational abuse and violation. (Author's abstract). Record #6122