Abstract

Within the New Zealand curriculum, hauora has been co-opted as an underlying and interdependent concept at the heart of the learning area of health and physical education. Hauora is identified as a Māori philosophy of well-being, advocating a Māori world view of hauora. Contemporary understandings of hauora as a Māori philosophy of health are constructed within dominant English-medium curriculum discourses. At first glance the juxtaposition of ‘hauora’ with ‘well-being’, and hauora being defined as ‘a Māori philosophy of health’ seems like an opportunity to promote an indigenous perspective of health into English-medium curriculum, but the philosophical questions of what knowledge is valued, why we should teach it, and its worth of what is taught for human well-being, remain fraught. The notion of hauora is much richer than the word ‘health’ allows. I explore some issues associated with the equivalence between hauora and health, and some of the potential nuances of hauora in light of a counter-colonial Māori philosophy of holism. I invite the reader to consider the terms ‘whakapapa’ and ‘wairua’ in light of a proposed metaphysics. I show that the terms—and the objects they point to—share a relationship with each other and that recognition of that interdependence are necessary to their well-being.