Takitoru is a framework developed to support Māori counselling students to understand the impacts of historical intergenerational trauma across generations. The focus of this framework examines unseen contributing factors supporting deficit statistics that continue to dominate Māori communities. Essentially students are invited to participate and interpret personal genealogy in the context of colonisation to explore infl uences and effects. This paper addresses training Indigenous counselling students simultaneously in affirmative Indigenous worldviews, as well as critiquing the impact of colonisation on themselves, their clients and their wider community. The overall goal is to give students an insight into historical intergenerational trauma so that when they engage with Māori clientele they also understand some of the historical contexts that underpin working with Māori.