Holly Weir-Tikao

2022 Cohort

Holly is revitalising knowledge and use of taonga puoro (traditional Māori musical instruments) to reindigenise approaches to mental and physical health and wellbeing.

Holly is Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū and Ngāi Tahu in Te Waipounamu (South Island), Aotearoa NZ. She is based in Whakatū Nelson where she is Project Manager at TIPU MAHI, the South Island Māori Health Workforce Development Project. At the South Island Alliance Programme Office, the project is addressing Māori health inequities by growing the Māori health workforce across the South Island’s five current District Health Boards.

As a passionate advocate for Indigenous rights and Māori kaupapa (principles and policy), Holly is working to achieve intergenerational transformation ('flipping the deficit') by tackling systemic racism and discrimination in the health system. This includes supporting a thriving Māori health workforce to achieve self-determination and successful outcomes for Māori communities. She has a professional background in health and education and has worked as a cultural advisor and supervisor in these and other sectors.

Holly is also part of a collective of taonga puoro (traditional Māori musical instruments) practitioners. Taonga puoro knowledge was almost completely lost due to colonization, and the collective is revitalising its use and knowledge in Māori communities. She strives to live her life with Te Ao Māori (worldview) values as described in her tribal whakataukī (proverb): ‘Mō tātou, ā, mō kā uri a muri ake nei’ (for us and for our children after us).

“I want to use mana-enhancing practices to redistribute Indigenous knowledge systems back to our communities, for us and for the generations after us.”

Social change work

Holly’s social change project is to reintroduce and normalise the knowledge and use of taonga puoro (traditional Māori musical instruments), which are almost never seen in mainstream clinical health and wellbeing environments. Taonga puoro and pūrākau (traditional Māori history and creation narratives) will be used to re-indigenise approaches to mental and physical health and wellbeing, ensuring Mātauranga Māori (knowledge, ways of being and doing) are more easily accessible for their communities.