Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Porou. Dr Nicole Penetito-Hemara (aka Nikki) is a respected Māori academic, researcher, practitioner and strategist whose work brings mātauranga Māori into meaningful practice across health, education and community settings. She is known for creating spaces where people can reconnect with knowledge, identity and one another, and for challenging conventional approaches through Indigenous ways of knowing and doing.
Nikki weaves ancestral knowledge with research and tākaro to create learning experiences that are embodied, relational and transformative. At the heart of her work is a belief in the power of tākaro to reconnect people with who they are, where they come from and the knowledge held within whakapapa. Through play, movement and pūrākau, she creates opportunities for people to experience knowledge rather than simply learn about it.
Her research explores tākaro as an Indigenous practice and its potential to transform how we think about learning and wellbeing. Increasingly, her work is centred on Indigenous joy, exploring how play and laughter can create safety, strengthen connection and act as forms of resistance. Through kaupapa Māori research, Nikki is interested in what becomes possible when Māori ways of knowing, being and doing are not added to existing systems, but become the foundation for reimagining them.
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