This article presents the findings from narrative interviews conducted with Māori healers about their understandings of the underlying values of rongoā Māori. The paper considers the implications for the inclusion of Māori and indigenous cultural values in indigenous research methodologies, and considers the implications of their alignment and integration with accepted Western research methodologies. 

Type-2 diabetes and other illnesses associated with a sedentary lifestyle have a high prevalence among Māori. While the application of knowledge from exercise physiology, a specific discipline of the health sciences, could be used to enhance Māori health aspirations, Māori-led research in this field is relatively uncommon. Exercise physiology seeks to understand physical performance and the relationships between fitness, body composition, health and illness. Rarely have the key tenets of exercise physiology been applied to Māori populations.

This paper addresses two objectives; first, to explore whether the concept of resilience, as described in the international literature, has resonance in the New Zealand Indigenous context; and second, to discuss the link between the concept of resilience and the Māori concept of whānau ora. The paper draws on findings from a qualitative study that utilised a single case study design. Data collection methods for the full study included a comprehensive literature review, organisational document review, conceptual framework development, in-depth key informant interviews and sequential focus groups with health service consumers.

In New Zealand, Māori are entitled to the same level of well- being experienced by non- Māori citizens. However, disparities between the two populations are evident. In 2010, a new public policy approach to health and social service delivery was announced: one underpinned by Māori values, and which ostensibly provided the Crown with another mechanism to reduce health and social well- being disparities. The whānau (family) centred approach seeks to achieve the goal of “whānau- ora” (well- being of the extended family) and requires health services to work across traditional sector boundaries to improve client health.