PhD Researcher: Ahinata Kaitai-Mullane (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) (VUW)
Primary supervisor: Dr Annie Te One (VUW)
Project summary:
Throughout our lives, we navigate and journey through identity and the world in a vessel built from our culture, our experiences, our strengths, our aspirations, and our learnings. How we learn about and care for this vessel and ourselves is the heart of this PhD project. Specifically, Ahinata’s project engages with the experiences of wāhine and gender diverse Kāi Tahu, informed by iwi and gender specific contexts, in order to answer the question: How do we as wāhine and gender diverse Kāi Tahu learn about, become, and take care of ourselves, specifically in the areas of gender, sex, sexuality and body? The experiences of Kāi Tahu as we navigate our gender, sex, sexuality, and body are significant as they can inform both what works for us and what needs are unmet by the learning processes we engage with now. To gather our own experiences is to build our capacity to develop specific resources for Kāi Tahu whānau and young people to support us journeying in our vessels.