An artist who sees the world a little differently, young designer Jordan Tane is changing how takiwātanga is seen, calling it her superpower and showing how lived experience can be a source of strength, healing and change.
Jordan Tane (Ngāpuhi) is a PhD student at Auckland University of Technology whose research explores ways to improve communication around cultural identity, whānau violence and youth mental health.
Despite the challenges she has faced, Tane says takiwātanga shapes how she thinks, creates and tells stories.
“Myself being takiwātanga, being autistic, and the struggles I’ve had, like growing up not being able to talk properly, being non-verbal until I was 12 years old, and kind of finding art as my own voice. Like, it saved my life.”
Tane says art helped her connect with her taha Māori and whakapapa when she could not always express herself through words.
“It allowed me to connect to my whakapapa. Because for me, language was so difficult, and I couldn’t always connect with people. I couldn’t always speak. With our culture, it’s such an important part, but it was something I couldn’t connect to.”
Her master’s research was grounded in Kaupapa Māori approaches to hauora and violence prevention. As part of the project, she worked alongside whānau who had experienced state intervention and the removal of tamariki.
Tane helped turn their experiences into an accessible booklet containing resources and practical guides for whānau.
“There’s a journey map about how to get a protection order or what is the process of uplifting.”
During the research, Tane and her team struggled to find clear information online, proving her case for an accessible visual resource for whānau.
“You try to look it up online; it’s so scattered; we were struggling to find the answer. So being able to put that into one simple document that’s simple, that’s visuals that people can actually understand.”
She hopes her work will make academic research more accessible to whānau.
“In an academic space, when you do a lot of research, it gets put into articles and journal articles, and it gets sent off to different universities. Communities are actually impacted. They don’t have access to those. They’re not going to read an article.
“Being able to take those themes off those wānanga and bring them into visuals and humanise that data.”
Tane has been named as a finalist in two categories at the New Zealand Best Design Awards for Social Good Student and Academic Social Good.
