Tīhei Wāhine Ora: Wāhine from Gang Whānau Healing Intergenerational Trauma

Tīhei Wāhine Ora: Wāhine From Gang Whānau Healing Intergenerational Trauma is a research book carried out by sole researcher, Paora Moyle. It documents what wāhine Māori connected to gang whānau know about healing, leadership, and securing different futures for their mokopuna. The book draws on interviews and focus groups with 20 wāhine across Aotearoa and Australia, conducted by Moyle over two years. The work was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand and carried out in collaboration with Wāhine Toa, the only women’s chapter of the Mongrel Mob in Aotearoa, and Te Whāriki Manawāhine o Hauraki (Te Whāriki).

The book is structured through the Pū-Rā-Ka-Ū framework. It traces the whakapapa origins of wāhine leadership, the strengths and healing practices already present in their lives, the colonial violence and systemic barriers they have survived, and the solutions they are building for the future. Nine findings emerge from this analysis. These include how wāhine authority in te ao Māori is structural, how the state targets these wāhine and retaliates when they resist, how survival produced expertise, and how grief became the ground of collective political power. Pouhine, a healing wānanga offered by Te Whāriki since 1995, is a key part of the book as evidence of what becomes possible when healing is led by wāhine, for wāhine.

This book is for anyone working in health, justice, social services, or policy who wants to understand what actually works for wāhine from gang whānau. It offers an alternative to the deficit narratives shaped by media and institutions that have never centred their voices. It is also for researchers and students working in Mana Wāhine scholarship, Kaupapa Māori research, or Indigenous psychology.

It is for wāhine themselves, and their whānau, who will find their own herstories reflected here, often for the first time.