I Am the River and the River Is Me: Mātauranga Māori, Creative Healing, and the Global Crisis of Disconnection
Faculty Mentor
Olivia Sylvester
Major/Area of Research
Global Studies
Description
INTRODUCTION: Across the world, people are experiencing a growing sense of social and cultural disconnection - from community, culture, and even self. Yet dominant health systems continue to focus on individual treatment, often overlooking the collective, cultural, and spiritual roots of this crisis. My research explores (1) how dominant health frameworks overlook the relational and symbolic ways people heal, and (2) how creative, culturally grounded practices - such as art, storytelling, movement, and ceremony - can restore connection where clinical models fall short.
METHOD: Through a three-month internship with Te Oranganui, a Māori-led health organization in Aotearoa, I examined how Mātauranga Māori (traditional knowledge) is woven with Western frameworks to support holistic care. Using participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory art-based reflection, and guided by decolonial and relational ethics, I explored how healing takes shape through relationships, place, and collective practice - rebuilding connection across spiritual, cultural, and communal dimensions of health.
RESULTS: Findings are organized across three interconnected themes: Overcoming Separation, Relationship, and Embodiment. The first theme identifies disconnection - from self, others, culture, and the natural world - as a structural health crisis rooted in colonial fragmentation, not personal failure. Participants described disconnection as so total it reached the threshold of whether existence itself felt worth continuing. The second theme reveals that healing emerges through the radical redefinition and practice of relationship - to self, community, land, ancestors, and spirit - enacted through storytelling, ceremony, and communal responsibility. The third theme demonstrates that this relational understanding cannot remain intellectual: it must be somatically felt, symbolically expressed, and continuously lived through creative and cultural practice.
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: This research offers insight into how culturally grounded, multi-method, and community-based approaches can inform more relational models of care globally. Recognizing disconnection as structural - and healing as collective, embodied, and rooted in place - contributes to broader conversations about decolonizing health systems and reimagining care as a process of reconnection between self, people, culture, and the natural world.
I Am the River and the River Is Me: Mātauranga Māori, Creative Healing, and the Global Crisis of Disconnection
INTRODUCTION: Across the world, people are experiencing a growing sense of social and cultural disconnection - from community, culture, and even self. Yet dominant health systems continue to focus on individual treatment, often overlooking the collective, cultural, and spiritual roots of this crisis. My research explores (1) how dominant health frameworks overlook the relational and symbolic ways people heal, and (2) how creative, culturally grounded practices - such as art, storytelling, movement, and ceremony - can restore connection where clinical models fall short.
METHOD: Through a three-month internship with Te Oranganui, a Māori-led health organization in Aotearoa, I examined how Mātauranga Māori (traditional knowledge) is woven with Western frameworks to support holistic care. Using participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and participatory art-based reflection, and guided by decolonial and relational ethics, I explored how healing takes shape through relationships, place, and collective practice - rebuilding connection across spiritual, cultural, and communal dimensions of health.
RESULTS: Findings are organized across three interconnected themes: Overcoming Separation, Relationship, and Embodiment. The first theme identifies disconnection - from self, others, culture, and the natural world - as a structural health crisis rooted in colonial fragmentation, not personal failure. Participants described disconnection as so total it reached the threshold of whether existence itself felt worth continuing. The second theme reveals that healing emerges through the radical redefinition and practice of relationship - to self, community, land, ancestors, and spirit - enacted through storytelling, ceremony, and communal responsibility. The third theme demonstrates that this relational understanding cannot remain intellectual: it must be somatically felt, symbolically expressed, and continuously lived through creative and cultural practice.
DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: This research offers insight into how culturally grounded, multi-method, and community-based approaches can inform more relational models of care globally. Recognizing disconnection as structural - and healing as collective, embodied, and rooted in place - contributes to broader conversations about decolonizing health systems and reimagining care as a process of reconnection between self, people, culture, and the natural world.