Pacific Identities and Well-being: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

(Paperback)

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This anthology addresses the mental health and therapeutic needs of Polynesian and Melanesian people and the scarcity of resources for those working with them. It is divided into four parts - Identity, Therapeutic Practice, Death and Dying, Reflexive Practice - that approach the concerns of Maori, Samoans, Tongans, Fijians and people from Tuvalu and Tokelau. Contributors include a wide range of writers, most of who are Maori or Pasifika. Poems by Serie Barford, Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tracey Tawhia introduce each section. As Pasifika populations expand, so do the issues generated by colonisation, intermarriage, assimilation, socioeconomic insecurity and international migration. The stresses of adolescence, identity, families, death and spirituality are all explored here in innovative research that offers a wealth of inspiration and ideas to supportive family, friends and practitioners.

Author Bio

Margaret Agee leads the Counsellor Education Programme in the School of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work at the University of Auckland. With Philip Culbertson and Cabrini 'Ofa Makasiale, she coedited Penina Uliluli: Contemporary challenges in mental health for Pacific peoples (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), and she currently coedits the New Zealand Journal of Counselling with Philip Culbertson. Tracey McIntosh (Tuhoe) is a sociologist whose interests broadly look at processes of exclusion and marginalisation, with a more recent focus on the experience of incarceration. She is a past director of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga (a world-class Centre of Excellence for research relevant to Maori communities funded by TEAC and hosted by the University of Auckland) and is the current joint editor of AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples and the MAI Journal. She lectures in the Sociology Department of the University of Auckland. Philip Culbertson pretends he is retired, but he actually holds adjunct faculty status at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. He has edited two previous books on Pasifika mental health: Counselling Issues in South Pacific Communities (1997) and Penina Uliuli: Contemporary Challenges in Mental Health for Pacific Peoples (2007, co-edited with Margaret Nelson Agee and Cabrini 'Ofa Makasiale). With Margaret Agee, he is coeditor of the New Zealand Journal of Counselling. Cabrini 'Ofa Makasiale is a Catholic sister living in community with three other sisters. She works for Relationships Aotearoa Counselling Services (NGO) as the Pacific clinical cultural adviser. She is a qualified teacher, holds a Master's/Mistress' degree in Spirituality (2008), a postgraduate Diploma in Psychotherapy (1993), a Certificate in Group Analysis (2000) and a Proficiency Certificate in Post-Graduate Supervision (2011).