Rangahau | Research
Learn about the background to the research project & resource creation
Our study required a high degree of sensitivity, engaging with a complex and challenging research topic. We enacted our values in our engagements and interactions with one another, with our communities, and in the presentation of our research findings.
Our study supported Māori & allied postgraduate students in psychology to learn about Kaupapa Māori research, qualitative methods, and sensitive research. Our students contributed to the data collection, analysis and dissemination of the project findings.
Our study explored issues arising for rangatahi Māori who are becoming sexual beings by engaging interviews with rangatahi Māori, kaimahi, and kaumātua. We were interested in how these issues were shaped by social assumptions about gender, sexuality and racism. We were also interested in possible solutions and positive representations of Māori sexuality through mātauranga Māori.
Our researchers have developed academic peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and theses, as well as contributed to media articles during this study. Find them here.
Kaupapa Māori
Kaupapa Māori sexual violence specialists hold knowledge to support survivors and whānau to restore and heal from sexual violence. These knowledges are crucial in supporting rangatahi, whānau and communities to prevent sexual violence.
This project continues the work of kaupapa Māori sexual violence specialist practitioners and researchers.
Research rationale | Take rangahau
Indigenous communities experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence
Indigenous communities experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence. The harms of colonisation across generations are often missing from conversations about our national identity and are not well understood in how they shape Māori experiences of sexual violence.
In Aotearoa New Zealand:
Māori women are twice as likely to be impacted by sexual violence than other New Zealand women (Fanslow, Robinson, Crengle, & Perese, 2007).
One quarter of young Māori women have experienced some form of forced sex by the age of eighteen (Clark et al., 2016).
There are vulnerabilities for takatāpui (same sex-attracted) young people who are newly ‘out of the closet’
(Aspin, Reynolds, Lehavot, & Taiapa, 2009).