This study examines the cultural taxation experiences of Māori healthcare employees in Aotearoa. Cultural taxation, a form of implicit bias, refers to the burdens imposed on minority employees to engage in cultural responsibilities without receiving recognition or consideration in promotions (Padilla 1994). The current research, underpinned by kaupapa Māori methodologies, involved semi‐structured interviews with 24 Māori healthcare employees from various iwi and hapū with diverse professional backgrounds within a single organisational case study. The findings led to the proposed circular processes model of cultural taxation, encompassing (1) cultural expectation: Māori experiencing a range of explicit and implicit expectations to fulfil culturally related responsibilities; (2) appraisal: involving cognitive and emotional responses to the expectations, characterised by frustration or anger; (3) taxation: the impact of the cumulative effects of implicit or explicit discrimination as a result of the appraisal leading to burnout, organisational cynicism or withdrawal from both work or culture and (4) coping mechanism: including cognitive–behavioural, emotional and spiritual strategies Māori engaged in to manage the associated burden. The current research provides further evidence that Māori employees are expected to shoulder their culture in the workplace, without recognition for their contributions or institutional support.
“He aroha whakatō , he aroha puta mai” – if kindness is sown , then kindness you shall receive . Kindness in healthcare is often treated as an individual quality. Less attention has been paid to the organisational and relational conditions that sustain kindness in the daily reality of healthcare work. This study explores those conditions in a specific and instructive context: a large kaupapa Māori primary care organisation in Rotorua, Aotearoa New Zealand. Working in partnership with Korowai Aroha Health Centre, we conducted a co‐designed modified expert panel with fifteen staff members representing clinical, administrative, community and leadership roles. The activity was informed by participatory action research principles and structured within a socio‐ecological framework to explore the conditions for kindness at individual, team and organisational levels. Participants described kindness in relational terms, as something built through many small daily choices and interactions rather than through isolated acts. Kaupapa Māori values, including manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and the protection of mana, were consistently reflected in participant accounts, not as abstract principles but as practical descriptions of how people worked together each day. Conditions identified across all three levels included self‐reflection and reciprocity, seeing colleagues and patients as whānau, open and honest communication and protected time for connection. At the organisational level, participants identified the role of governance, business models, cultural investment and resourcing in either enabling or undermining these relational practices. Sufficient funding, careful hiring and workload design were not peripheral but understood as central to whether kindness could be sustained at all. While grounded in one specific kaupapa Māori context, this study offers something not yet present in the kindness literature: an account of how Indigenous values and organisational infrastructure interact to shape the conditions for kind practice—and what that means for how kindness in healthcare is understood and supported more broadly.
The body is where ancestral intelligence operates, where colonial harm has accumulated over generations, and where healing becomes physically possible. Mana Wāhine scholarship has theorised wāhine Māori authority as ancestral and structural, transmitted through whakapapa and whenua. How that authority lives in the body has remained under‐theorised. This article works from pūrākau shared by 20 wāhine Māori from gang whānau over 2 years of engagement, gathered using a Mana Wāhine pūrākau methodology. Four expressions identified by recurrence across the findings, Pūmahara, Wā, Tohu and Tiakitanga, account for how ancestral intelligence arrives through whakapapa, works in the body and is refined in consequence. What these wāhine describe here has rarely been recorded and never on these terms. The article extends Mana Wāhine theory into the somatic dimension of wāhine authority and challenges clinical and institutional readings of wāhine Māori knowing as pathology.
Queer communities—used here as an inclusive umbrella encompassing Takatāpui and LGBTIQ+ identities—continue to face significant and often overlooked challenges in accessing safe, secure and affirming housing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although 2023 Census data indicate that one in 20 adults identify as queer, there remains a critical lack of research and policy engagement with their specific housing and wellbeing needs. These inequities are compounded by systemic discrimination, social marginalisation and the ongoing absence of queer perspectives in mainstream housing and health discourse. This study responds to these gaps through a qualitative open‐text survey distributed via Rainbow Housing NZ, a private online forum administered by Gender Minorities Aotearoa. With over 5000 members, the platform functions as a peer‐led network for queer individuals seeking housing or offering queer‐affirming spaces. The survey investigates participants’ lived experiences navigating the housing system, the barriers encountered and the strategies employed to create safety, stability and belonging. Preliminary findings reveal persistent concerns around affordability, discrimination and safety, alongside innovative, community‐based practices of care, resilience and mutual support. The study calls for equity‐focused housing supports and policy reform as fundamental to inclusive public health, social justice and human wellbeing.
