‘We're Hands-On People’: Healing Diabetes in the Absence of Traditional Healers in an Aboriginal Community in Northern Territory, Australia.

This study of a remote Aboriginal community in Australia’s Northern Territory in 2014 sought to understand diabetes from a local Aboriginal perspective. Participants drew on a variety of holistic healing methods in the absence of an individual or individuals identified as holding a healing role in the community. The study offers an alternative to the common assumption that all communities can identify specific individuals as Aboriginal healers who are central to maintaining Aboriginal beliefs and wellbeing who contribute to holistic health (Clarke 2008; Maher 1999; McDonald 2006; Seathre 2013; Williams 2011). This research found the seven adult Aboriginal diabetes patients participating in the longitudinal ethnographic study actively engaged in self-healing strategies. Moreover, diabetes clinicians could combine local remedies and biomedical treatment to heal diabetes within the clinic, as well as actively engaging the patient in their own treatment, effective to reduce the symptoms and prevalence of diabetes in Aboriginal populations.

33 Days in Lockdown: Covid-19 Reflections from New Zealand

New Zealand’s 33-day, ‘level 4 lockdown’ in response to covid-19 invites anthropological reflection across a number of themes. What follows are extracts of an online anthropological diary examining the first month of the crisis as it unfolded, suggesting how social and political responses to the pandemic invite reflection upon anthropological concepts as diverse as states of emergency; healing spaces; embodiment and movement; soundscapes; the constitution of collective affect; crises and historical temporality; museum artefacts; globalism; collective pain; surveillance; and imagined biographies.

'Kiwiburn- a ‘Biophilic festival’: Considering mind-body-environment connections to nature in blended festivalscapes'

This article considers biophilic blended festivalscapes through an examination of relevant academic literature and secondary sources, whilst examining ‘Kiwiburn: New Zealand’s regional Burning Man event’ as a case study. A ‘biophilic festival’ can be understood as a festival that uses nature to construct or influence the embodied experiences of participants through their emotional responses, in a way that enhances positive mind-body-environment connections and promotion of biophilia. Examining Kiwiburn through the limitations of a literature review is an attempt to initiate a conversation about biophilia in connection to contemporary festivals. Kiwiburn provides a useful example of how biophilic festivals can be structured to foster sustainability, through mind-body-environment relationships. This article will be considering what principles and design features built into Kiwiburn are intended to drive positive ecological perceptions and practices within its participants; and, whether these biophilic elements have the potential for extension into the everyday lives of festival participants in broader society.

Being Pākehā & Researching the Experiences of Māori Women and Weight Loss Surgery: On Ethics & Ethnography

This paper proposes that the positionality of Pākehā researchers wishing to learn from Māori, can be reimagined as an atmospheric inter-subjective space within which conversations can happen across difference and between commonalities. I outline my own reckoning as a Pākehā attempting to enter this field as a part of my MA research on Māori women’s experiences of weight loss surgery. I argue that a form of differential distancing, while holding onto an ethic of care, enables a form of academic inquiry that is less stymied by the politics of permission. This paper also proposes that ethical representation can be bolstered by staying close to the logics for living of our participants and conceptualising their narratives through ‘embodied becoming’. I argue that this multi-faceted approach enables ethnography which retrieves nuance and releases participants, to a degree, from discourses that primarily frame individuals as victims of the state.

(Alter)narratives of ‘winning’: Supermarket and healthcare workers’ experiences of COVID19 in Aotearoa New Zealand

COVID-19 stories, especially from Aotearoa New Zealand as one of the leading nations ‘winning’ over the virus will be important historical documentation. The ‘team of 5 million’ is writing its narratives of life with/out COVID-19 – stories of ‘living in bubbles’, of ‘being kind’ and ‘being in it together.’ These are narratives of success which need to be examined alongside the narratives that have been absent from public national discourse but complicate understandings of ‘winning.’ To that end, in this article we map out (alter)narratives from supermarket and healthcare workers and highlight their stories of living and caring under lockdown. We posit that we need to pay attention to (alter)narratives of winning over COVID-19 in order to pay attention to the bodies and spaces that are often invisible but make winning possible. Thus, we see (Alter)narratives not as counter or anti to the nation’s winning narrative, but rather essential and adjacent.

You’re Giving Me a Headache: A Political–Cultural Textual Critique of Alt/Far-Right Anti-indigenous Thought on Indigenous Issues in Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper will provide a critical critique of Alt/Far-Right Political Thought on Indigenous Issues and History in Aotearoa New Zealand. It examines the preface of the book, “One Treaty, One Nation” entitled, “Some of The Myths on Which The Treaty Industry is Based” by emerging Alt/Far-Right Publisher, Tross Publishing. The author examines supposed ‘myths’ put forward by the authors. An exploration of the relevance of Aboriginal academic Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s White Possesive Doctrine, Histographpobia and Veracini’s Commentary of “On Settling.” This piece ends by providing commentary on the collective future of Aotearoa New Zealand should be based on.