It’s a small marae, tucked under trees in a valley, just before you go over the hill to be dazzled by the splendid vista of Hokianga Harbour.
It was here that Dr Bruce Perry, a pioneering US neuroscientist and psychiatrist, gained inspiration to continue his work in trying to heal kids reeling from a tough start in life. Perry, now 68, is an internationally recognised expert on the effect of abuse, neglect and trauma on the child’s brain. In his 2021 book written with Oprah Winfrey, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, he mentions his formative New Zealand experiences.
In 1997, through Kiwi connections impressed by his burgeoning work in neuroscience, Perry visited Te Kai Waha Marae. During that period, Perry was challenging the medical models of the time and writing about how early childhood experiences affect the wiring of the brain.
His colleagues working in mental health and child abuse pushed back. His work was “bullshit”; he didn’t know what he was talking about. But one doctor was listening. New Plymouth paediatrician Robin Fancourt read one of his articles and asked to study alongside him in Chicago. A very surprised Perry, who was still quite junior, said come on over.
At the time, Fancourt, also a pioneer in her field, was founder and chair of the newly formed Children’s Agenda. She later invited him to New Zealand to speak around the country on the “assessment and treatment of maltreated children: a neurodevelop-mental approach”.
Before he arrived in March 1997, Perry asked Fancourt to arrange for him to stay at a marae, which led to the people of Te Kai Waha, at Waiwhatawhata, hosting him at their beautiful, carved wharenui. A seed was sown.
The missing link
This was 26 years ago, so long ago that many who were there have died. Fancourt died of brain cancer in 2009. Most of the kaumātua who welcomed Perry at Te Kai Waha are gone. But the account of that influential visit is now in his book. He describes the feeling over the two days as that of a family reunion – “the warmth and strength of the community were palpable”.
The elders and rongōa healers were very patient with him, he tells the Listener, and when he asked how they handled depression, sleep problems, drug abuse and trauma, they were “gently amused” at his Western ideas. “They kept trying to help me understand that these problems were all basically the same thing. The problems were interconnected. In Western psychiatry, we like to separate them, but that misses the true essence of the problem. We are chasing symptoms, not healing people.”
Instead of different parts of the body being treated by different specialists – eye doctors, bone doctors, etc – many of the healing practices passed on by the locals involved reconnection. “If connectedness – whanaungatanga – wasn’t addressed, the potential effectiveness of Western interventions was blunted,” he says.
Whanaungatanga is at the heart of any marae in Aotearoa, but in 1992, it was the focus of the legendary Pā Henare Tate, a Catholic priest and leader from north Hokianga. It led to the development of the Dynamics of Whanaungatanga (DoW) programme, a practice framework still used today (see “Someone by your side”).
Perry, who was then 10 years into his career, had begun looking at indigenous healing practices to find solutions to help people. “I spent time with some First Nations healers in Canada and observed alternative processes. Whether it was the Cree healing practices or Nahua, everywhere I looked, people were using rhythm, plus connection and reconnection to the natural world and the natural order, which included people in the community. I started to see common themes in all traditional healing practices, so that’s why I wanted to spend time with Māori.”
At Te Kai Waha, one of many people he came across was a young man just out of prison. When he got up to speak, a kaumātua tapped Perry on the shoulder and said, “Watch this.”
“I was able to see how he was being brought back in,” says Perry. “Everybody was loving towards him. He didn’t say anything about his experience. It wasn’t about the pathological part, it was about being happy he was back with everyone.
“People were sharing good memories of when he was a little kid and making him feel welcome and connected, as opposed to ‘the next time you do this, you must think twice’ admonitions.
“The way we [in the US] handle everything is so rejecting, punitive, labelling and shaming. There was none of that. The way you come to understand this is not being cognitively aware, it’s an experience that includes a cognitive awareness, but you can’t get to the core of awareness without having the experience.”
John Klaricich, kaumātua of Te Kai Waha, believes his aunt, Jane Marsden, would have been there when Perry visited. She was known and respected as the principal faith healer and practitioner of rongoā Māori.
Klaricich (Ngāpuhi), aged 91, told the Listener it’s an honour for his marae to be recognised by Perry in his book. But at that time, Te Kai Waha had many overseas visitors. Groups came from colleges in the US as well as First Nations visitors from North America and medical students from Otago University, among others.
It was part of a resurgence of indigenous culture happening at the time, he says. He believes Perry would have seen the threads of whanaungatanga coming to the fore. “The whole thing about a marae is working together.”
The marae’s wharenui is also the place where the ancestors reside, he says, pointing to the back wall. It’s the long reach of whanaungatanga.
What Perry took from the experience was the importance of connections with family, even if it’s just one person who believes in you. He says recovery from trauma and neglect is now all about relationships and rebuilding trust.
“Of course, medications help relieve symptoms, and talking to a therapist can be incredibly useful. But healing and recovery are impossible, even with the best medi-cations and therapy in the world, without lasting, caring connections to others.”
There’s an anecdote in the book, about a young boy in the US, Timothy, who was having learning difficulties at school. Teachers had labelled him “trouble”. Perry spent time with the boy’s mother and learnt she had lived with an abusive partner during the first three years of the boy’s life. Eventually, they escaped to another state but experienced extreme poverty, and neither the boy nor his mother had any friends. The mother was just trying to survive and find work. Due to the boy’s early trauma, his emotional development was behind other kids his age. “The contrast between Timothy and his mother’s world and the Māori community was striking,” he says.
Perry’s work began with the mother. He found her a solo mums’ support group, which opened up social opportunities. The more she felt connected with her community, the more the boy felt safe and connected at home. His relationships with those at school improved, as did his ability to learn.
As Perry and Winfrey write, when schools are asking “What’s wrong with this child?” [the children] get labelled, but if they’re asking “What happened to you?” it paves the way to solutions.
Perry has collected data from more than 70,000 cases in 25 countries – children, young people, adults. “We have taken detailed histories of trauma, adversity, as well as histories of relational health – essentially connectedness: the nature, quality and quantity of connections to family, community and culture,” he writes.
“Our major finding is that [connectedness] is more predictive of your mental health than your history of adversity.”
Sometimes, the trauma runs, so deep talk therapy and relationships aren’t enough. He tells the story of Susan, who suffered severe trauma and neglect under age 2. At 7, she had the social skills of a 2-year-old and no one could manage her outbursts and self-mutilation.
Perry’s neurosequential model allowed the team to create a therapeutic plan to access the lower region of the brain first. They used weighted blankets and then brought in massage. The techniques evolved from sensory to rhythmic to regulatory – including working with a therapy dog – to relational, to cognitive therapy.
It’s a bit like building a house, he says. You have to get the foundations right before you start work on the upper storeys.
Again, he was inspired by other cultures, for example Native American healers. Through music, rhythm and connection with the natural world, that lower region of the brain can be accessed.
Working with Oprah
Perry, from North Dakota, is no stranger to trauma. His newly-wed wife was murdered in a church in 1974, and it took 44 years for the case to be solved.
He has worked with survivors of high-profile massacres, including traumatised children from the Columbine High School tragedy, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Waco siege. He is one of the leads of the Child Trauma Academy in Texas, which focuses on non-medical models of care and cross-agency collaborations.
His collaborations with Winfrey began in 1989, when he was a junior neuroscientist at Northwestern University, Chicago. She invited him to her farm in Indiana to talk about child abuse and its effect on the developing brain. Their work went on to inform the 1991 Child Protection Act in the US, and they’ve worked on many other projects since.
In a 2020 academic paper, Perry writes that his neurosequential model of therapeutics (NMT) has shown effectiveness in a range of clinical settings, including early childhood, foster care and mental health outpatient clinics.
Not so much a treatment, it’s a way of understanding how trauma and relationships affect a growing child, and it provides a framework for choosing effective therapies.
More than 2500 clinicians and 200 organisations/programmes in 24 countries have become certified in NMT since 2008, he writes.
Sprouting Brainwave
Perry’s NZ visits – three in the late 1990s – were the catalyst for the Brainwave Trust Aotearoa, which this year marks its 25th anniversary. It began with Fancourt working alongside then-TV news presenter Judy Bailey (now patron), children’s advocate Lesley Max and paediatrician Ian Hassall, New Zealand’s first Commissioner for Children. They made it their mission to share knowledge about the importance of the first 1000 days of a child’s life, to make the research accessible and understandable to everyone influencing the lives of pēpi, tamariki and rangatahi.
They’ve worked with teachers, Plunket nurses and in prisons. But more recently, they’ve expanded their focus to work with hapū and community groups around the country, holding wānanga where existing whānau knowledge is shared, along with evidence-based science and indigenous knowledge.
Brainwave also has a strong advocacy arm, including working with Tākai, the community-focused arm of Oranga Tamariki, and was instrumental in informing the 2014 Children’s Act. Brainwave includes practitioners such as veteran neonatal paediatrician Simon Rowley, who remembers Perry’s visits. “Everybody was bowled over by the story of how children’s [and babies’] brains develop in response to the environment they grow up in.”
Now, there are screeds of research to support this, but at the time it was groundbreaking. “The first 1000 days are a really important time of your life in which a whole lot of neural and metabolic patterns are laid down for your lifetime.”
Rowley recalls a quote by US psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, “Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about them.” This doesn’t need to be a parent, he explains. “It can be an uncle, aunt, grandparent ... someone to recognise and realise their potential.”
At the end of Perry’s visit, he stood with a rongoā Māori tohunga overlooking Hokianga Harbour. The kuia said to him, “We are healers.”
Perry smiled, thinking they were having a moment as healers. Then, she said, “No. We. Are. Healers,” and touched her heart.
“She was saying everyone’s a healer, the collective ‘we’,” says Perry. He didn’t get it at the time, but does now. “It’s embarrassing to think about it. She was so sweet and patient. I hope she knows I grew up and got better.”
Someone by your side
Connecting with family, ancestors and the land can turn lives around, a Far North kuia explains. By Ruth Brown.
Irene Hancy is 80 and she works every day. When she gets home, there are more people to see, more people to help.
The former nurse, from Whirinaki in Hokianga, works for Te Mana o Ngāpuhi Kowhao Rau, which supports offenders up before the Matariki Court, based at the Kaikohe District Court. It was set up 14 years ago as a diversion path for those who choose it. The team tries to help reduce the chance of reoffending through the Dynamics of Whānaungatanga (DoW) programme.
This process of turning lives around might include karakia, music, dialogue or role play, but it stems from the importance of connections with family, with tūpuna (ancestors) and with the land.
Hancy says for those who might be ill at ease and fed up with the world, first comes learning about their family and ancestors, and that’s often when the penny drops. People trying to find out who they are and what their purpose in life is find a place to begin.
Hancy sees a lot of drug and alcohol abuse in her line of work. “But when you peel away the layers of trauma, when you see what they have been through, I identify with that drug and alcohol abuse … You throw a pebble in the water and trauma goes everywhere. I could see myself becoming a drug addict [in those circumstances].
“It’s hard for someone to know what it is to be accountable when they have nothing that allows them to get a sense of wellbeing. They are always in survival mode, and that leads to petty crime and then more serious crime.”
The answer is within, she tells everyone: to look back to ancestors to see “what’s in the breed”. There could be “great cooks, leaders, musicians – it’s all in the genes in that family line”.
Everyone has a kete full of taonga; “it’s what you do with those gifts that matters.”
More than 30 years ago, Hancy started learning with Pā Henare Tate, a Catholic priest and leader from Te Motuti Marae in north Hokianga. Tate spent years talking to kaumātua and kuia at marae around the country and his thesis, “He Puna Iti i te Ao Mārama – A Little Spring in the World of Light”, was the result, along with DoW, developed in 1992.’
Westerners often ask Māori why mana whenua perform a karanga at the beginning of a pōwhiri, and the answer is often that that’s just what Māori do, says Hancy. DoW is about understanding why.
“Our ancestors were skilled in all these processes but they were practitioners before they were preachers.” Understanding the tikanga and rituals can turn empty words into something meaningful, she says. “If you are saying a lot of words and not understanding what the karanga means then you’re in trouble.”
These customs, like religious rituals, are all about enabling communities to live together in harmony, like a family where everyone has a role and a job to do.
One man in his late 30s, who had been living with no responsibilities or allegiances (“It’s like he stayed 18 all these years”), suddenly realised how many different roles he had – as a father, a brother, a son, a nephew, an uncle. It was enough for him to make some life changes.
Then there was the man who would drink in the evenings and was always too busy to see his mokopuna play sport. Through group discussions led by Hancy, he was persuaded to go to watch and that was it. From then on, his weekends were full, cheering from the sidelines. Giving up alcohol was not a problem.
Echoing US psychiatrist and neuroscientist Bruce Perry, she says it’s also important to have someone on your side – in Māori terms a “pou”, someone to reach out to when things are tough.
Hancy says loss of land is at the root of much of trauma for Māori, who have just a fraction of the land they used to have.
To illustrate the importance of whenua, she cites the story of a friend who was somewhat upset by her neighbours, a couple from overseas who moved in next door. The friend and her husband had a home overlooking a beach. The neighbours invited them over soon after they moved in.
Thinking it was a chance to get to know each other, the Māori couple were somewhat surprised when they were offered $1.5 million for their land. They said no, and immediately the overseas pair upped the offer to $3 million. Again, it was no.
In the end they offered $20 million for that piece of beachfront. Still the answer was no.
Hancy’s friend told the couple, “I am really sorry for you. We belong to the land, we don’t sell, we are of the land.”
In her own whakapapa, Hancy comes from a long line of healers, but she doesn’t see herself as one: “I’m a worker,” she says. But some might just call her a healer.