Huakina: opening minds, improving practice – Nathan Wallis & Melanie Riwai-Couch

Engaging with an indigenous framework and learning a worldview beyond your own offers profound benefits that extend far beyond the obvious. Whether or not you identify as indigenous, this experience activates unique neurological connections, altering foundational brain structures. These changes enhance overall intelligence, resilience, and perseverance, particularly in children.

Learning a second language and culture creates a “third perspective” in your mind, known as metacognition—thinking about how you think. This process allows you to compare and synthesize different approaches, generating insights that are impossible from a single worldview. Similarly, learning two languages helps you understand language structure better, a concept known as “meta-language.” With only one language or culture, we tend to take certain assumptions for granted, like how to solve problems or manage authority.

Expanding from one worldview to two unlocks powerful brain networks, benefiting every aspect of your life. Research shows no other practice matches the structural brain benefits of engaging with diverse worldviews. Māori ancestors in New Zealand understood this deeply, as reflected in tikanga, waiata, whakatauki, and oriori, which communicate this wisdom in intricate detail—without the tools of modern neuroscience.

Nathan and Melanie combine their expertise in Tikanga Māori, indigenous education, and neuroscience to offer teachers new ways to expand their knowledge and practice. Inspired by the remarkable connections between research and tikanga, they aim to share this understanding to support teachers in their journey.