Mentor, psychiatrist and author Dr Hinemoa Elder's best-selling books draw from ancient Māori wisdom and mythology, but her main tip for this year is straight-up. She talks to Mariana Whareaitu.
For Dr Hinemoa Elder, 2025 has been a “pretty up and down” year, one she sums up with a whakatauākī, a proverb, that goes: Ka pari te tai, ka timu te tai, ka ngaro te tohu i haea engari ka mau tonu te wairua.
“It’s one of my favourites from the kāinga (home). You know, the tide comes in, the tide goes out. The line that was drawn in the sand – we might no longer see the actual line, but the wairua, the intention, and the spiritual significance of that remains.
“So, our decisions flow with some different influences on our lives but our intentions and our spiritual wellbeing are still there.”
The past year has been tough on families and communities, she says, including Māori. So she’s looking forward to te tau hou Pākehā, the Pākehā new year, and says planning for that looks very different to what she may do for Puanga, referring to the early winter star that signifies the coming of the Māori new year for her Northland iwi.
The Pākehā new year is about summer, she says. "It's about planning for the heat and finding places that are cool and refreshing and enjoying the warmth and thinking about our water consumption.
“Like many other whānau we are on tank water, so we have to think very carefully about the water that we use at this time of the year.”
Elder has built a career integrating Māori cultural values and reo with her work as a psychiatrist, exploring practical solutions. Her PhD thesis included developing a tikanga-based therapeutic framework for Māori children with traumatic brain injuries.
Now she works at iwi-run health services Te Hiku Hauora, where they live by Māori cultural values.
“We have whakamoemiti (giving thanks) and (my colleague) Uncle Bundy always asks me to talk about the maramataka (Māori lunar calendar) or te kanohi a Hina (the face of Hina, goddess of the moon) of a particular day... and we sing waiata, and we ground ourselves in our Muriwhenuatanga (Muriwhenua iwi identity), if you will.”
It's the same kind of reflective wisdom that can be found in her books – Aroha, Wawata, Waitohu and the latest, Ara – which encourage people to connect with the environment, with each other and, ultimately, ourselves.
So it may come as a surprise to hear how concrete her first piece of advice is for 2026.
“My first piece of advice is please make sure you are registered to vote and make sure that you are thinking about and learning about our political system and how you can have your voice, because that’s also part of our mental health and wellbeing.
“Of course, many people we know choose not to vote, and when I’ve heard from people who choose those options, often they tell me that, well, they don’t see much point for various reasons. So, I suppose my advice for people is find a purpose for voting. Voting is incredibly important. People fought for the right to vote and so I’d encourage people to do that for our mental health and wellbeing.”
“Secondly, get out in nature, get out in the taiao. Look up at the sky, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the landscape around you. That is the tuāpapa (foundation) of health and wellbeing, to recognise how connected we are and that most of our lives are organised around things that actually keep us away from the natural world, unfortunately.
“So we have to make an effort to be by the water, to be in the ngahere (forest), to get outdoors and feel comfortable outside and really sit in and pay attention and notice what’s going on in te taiao.”
SHARE ME