Kōrero Mōmona, Kōrero ā-Hauora: a Kaupapa Māori and fat studies discussion of fatness, health and healthism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores dual understandings of fatness and health from Kaupapa Māori and Fat Studies perspectives. Fatness for Indigenous peoples can be complex and an entanglement of multiple oppressions. Often Māori understandings of bodies and fatness that reflect whakapapa (genealogy, ancestry, layering of those we come from) and culture are excluded from health contexts and discourses. Understanding fatness and health from a Kaupapa Māori perspective creates space to include these aspects of who we are as Māori and what fatness and body size and shape means for us without being limited or restricted by sizeism, healthism or deficit discourses. Fat studies acknowledges the cultural constraints against fat people and fat bodies and the structural oppression that prevents fat people from accessing public services, including evidence-based healthcare. Fat studies approaches present alternative discourses to fatness and body size that seek to re-center fat people and critique oppression. Utilizing writing as inquiry, we suggest a shift away from public health approaches to fatness that can often be oppressive and perpetuate healthism, in favor of Kaupapa Māori and fat studies pathways that promote self-determination and agency, supporting the community and collective, and body sovereignty.