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How is it possible to think and act psychoanalytically within a very different cultural framework than the occidental ones we are accustomed to? This question is raised as a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalytic therapist with my own shamanic training as a sangoma in South Africa, working currently at a Māori mental health service, a service that is dedicated to the indigenous people of Aotearoa (Māori for the land of the long white cloud), New Zealand. Within an indigenous cultural framework, it is worth considering that, according to Levi-Strauss, the shaman was in fact the first psychoanalyst (Levi-Strauss, 1963). I do not attempt to reduce or equate shamanism with psychoanalytic thought (Winkelman, 2010); at the same time, shamanism has rich parallels with psychoanalysis worth exploring. The Māori model of well-being, outlined fully below, allows shamanism to share with psychoanalysis stories, myths, and imagery, which makes for healing through living words and practices. Some thoughts concerning the setting and cultural trauma will be outlined, before describing the Māori model of well-being. This will be followed by a vignette of work practiced at the Māori mental health service.
In regards to the cultural-clinical interface, similar to other indigenous people across the world, the evidence strongly suggests that Māori wish to have choices of how to integrate conventional clinical mental health service assessments and treatments with traditional and complementary cultural practices and healing methods (Lambrecht & Taitimu, 2012). This has a political dimension in that Māori mental health services are the result of an awareness of a cultural-political position, that is, therapeutic support for Māori by Māori in the face of white cultural dominance (Durie, 2001). This approach is well supported and validated in many other countries (Griner & Smith, 2006). This position is a form of political activity to protec