Te Māoritanga WELLBEING AND IDENTITY Kapa Haka as a Vehicle

not using the concept as it directly relates to the Māori concept of wellness or
well-being, as opposed to the English translation of the word. To illustrate this,
you need to look at the word itself. Within Haa-uu-ora is sustainability, life,
aspirations, breath, reciprocity, grounding, nurturing, cyclicity, success, wairua
links, internal processes, inner cognition (Heaton, 2006). Indeed, Ratima (2001)
states that a debate in generic health promotion is further confused by a lack of
consensus on the meaning of health. For those who embrace a capacity-based
definition of health, the attainment of health and the attainment of broader
human development goals may be one and the same. Therefore, the lack of
clear definition of hauora and other related terms, reflect a tension in
perspective about the term hauora.
Walsh-Tapiata and Webster (2005) at Hui Whakapiripiri 13 2005
presented a research report on what constituted Hauora for rangatahi 14 . A
number of items of significance were investigated, and this youth-led project
came up with a number of terms encompassing hauora, which are summarised
in table 2 15 ;
Table 2 - List of terms used by Youth to describe ‘Hauora’ (A)
What is interesting is the words in Table 3 were also referred to as
reflecting aspects of hauora, although most have some negative associations
13 Hui Whakapiripiri – Māori health researchers gathering.
14 The term ‘Rangatahi’ has been extracted from the proverb “Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te
rangatahi, the contemporary meaning being youth.
15 Adopted from Walsh-Tapiata and Webster (2005).
15