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against. Now you9re really working with how a family history of engaging with the
problem can be used to support a young person engaging with a similar problem.
It never ceases to amaze me that these stories, and this history, are rarely ever
known prior to these interviews. They might have had glimmers or snatches, but
not in a way that is a resource like this.
LR: I can see this being so helpful in working with families whose ancestors
suffered from and stood against systems of oppression.
KAY: Absolutely, because as a narrative therapist, I do see problems inside of a
social, political, cultural context, but not inside the individual. A problem has its
beginnings, as you say, sometimes generations back, and it9s located in history. To
be able to locate it there can be so liberating for people and then, as you say,
engage the whole history of how a community, a family may have engaged with a
problem over time.
That is particularly true for Māori families, where there is such a strong
connection to ancestors and the people who walk with you and ancestral warriors
and people who9ve engaged with colonisation and practices of colonisation.
People can often trace back their ancestry to a particular ancestor who perhaps
was involved in signing the founding document of New Zealand, the Treaty of
Waitangi.
I9m thinking again of that young woman, Fatu, who came from a very poor Māori
community. Many of the young people around her were in dire straits. One of
them had recently killed himself. We located the problem at one stage inside of
racism. She told me the story in a subsequent session about how she went to a
party where it was mostly White kids there, and she was feeling really
comfortable. She was with her friends, and then somebody said something really
racist. We were able to talk about what happened at that party in terms of
racism, not in terms of anxiety or how she could be more confident in situations
like that. I think that meant the world for her to talk in terms of race like that, and
allowed her then to engage her voice of opposition, of outrage, of agency against
that problem and to talk about it, because how many young people would have
Kay Ingamells on the Wonderfulness Interview in Narrative Practice
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, August 2026 Release, p. 94-110.
www.journalcnt.com
