‘We have a right to flourish in our own land’: using pedagogies of healing to support Indigenous students to thrive in university classrooms

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article responds to a pressing question, posed by Māori university students in Aotearoa, New Zealand: How do teachers transform universities into places where Indigenous students can thrive and heal? To address this question, we engage with pedagogies of healing, a radical critique of wellbeing within the classroom. We utilized the Māori practice of wānanga to facilitate collective reflection and action. We propose three principles for enabling Māori and Indigenous healing within classrooms: engage colonial histories, foreground Indigenous forms of knowledge, and uplift students through Indigenous research on/as healing. Within these, we offer seven teaching strategies to enact a pedagogy of healing and create classroom ‘healing zones’, strategies that challenge the individualized and depoliticized approaches to wellbeing dominant within contemporary universities.