Dr Ihirangi Heke and Atuatanga

Following a decade of teaching traditional Maori games, firstly as part of a University of Otago Physical Education degree and latterly as part of a Maori health initiative based out of the Tairawhiti, an interest in the origin of Maori physical activity in its’ own right came to life.

More specifically, I have become interested in not only wanting to know where traditional games came from but the whakapapa of physical activity from the time of arrival of Maori to Aotearoa. Important too, for my role as a health promoter, how could this interest in the whakapapa of physical activity be translated into creating a sustainable platform to support a contemporary interest in physical activity and consequent health. 

What I soon discovered was that pre-European Maori had a comprehensive array of training techniques at the highest level and included expertise in strength and conditioning techniques for power, agility, quickness, speed, coordination, flexibility, muscular endurance, strength and aerobic conditioning.

In addition these strength and conditioning techniques were garnered from their most abundant resource i.e., the environment that they lived in and shared with other living beings. That is, Maori looked to their atua (gods), kaitiaki (guiding animals) and tipua (spiritual animals e.g., taniwha) to make sense of their world and strengthen their control over their collective destiny (iwi, hapu, whanau). Maori began to look to the characteristics and personality traits of their atua, kaitiaki and tipua as guiding forces on which to build strength and conditioning programmes for not only the physical (tinana) attributes but also their mental toughness (hinengaro) and spiritual connections (wairua) to their environment.

Jumping forward some centuries later, Maori have come from being highly attuned to their bodies through their environment, to representing some of the worst health statistics on the global scale of indigenous health.

Based on the above, the intention is to build physical activity programmes that somehow use the environment in a contemporary manner to improve or increase Maori physical activity and consequent health. More concisely - this will be a global first of culture informing physical activity informing health.

In summary, this new initiative has been developed to build a socially and culturally valid approach to improving Maori health by; proving to contemporary Maori that pre-European Maori valued physical training and consequent health, that a more culturally and socially sound strength-based approach exists to counter the current deficit model and that, Maori may lead other indigenous people in the the shift to valuing their health. Lastly and with some irony, this means that many of the activities peculiar to Maori i.e., whakapapa,  tikanga, kawa, atuatanga, kaitiakitanga and tipuatanga may in fact be the key to Maori understanding the role of physical activity and why it should be valued because of it’s connection with our genetic origins.