The Māori Renaissance and the Return of Tohunga Authority

Record summary

Māori cultural revitalization has encouraged renewed discussion of tohunga, rongoā Māori, wairua, whakapapa, and forms of ancestral expertise. Contemporary practitioners and researchers present these variously as healing, cultural knowledge, spiritual practice, or community identity, while biomedical and legal institutions evaluate them differently. This lead matters for comparison with occult traditions because it concerns the recovery and reclassification of esoteric-seeming expertise after colonial suppression. The terms are not interchangeable, and individual practitioners may reject “occult” as an outsider category.