Original Medicine 4-Part Series:
Wairua & Dreams in Te Ao Māori with Amelia Butler
About the Session
An introduction to wairua (spirit) and the role of dreams in Māori understandings of ancestral connection. Grounded in tikanga Māori (Māori customs & protocol), this session offers meaningful insight into cultural beliefs, values, and respectful ways of engaging with tūpuna (ancestors) beyond Western frameworks.
About Original Medicine 4-Part Series
Original Medicine 4-Part Series is a platform for Indigenous elders, teachers, and healers from all four corners of the world to come and share their wisdom. This series seeks to illuminate the often overlooked and unheard voices of Indigenous people. These sessions offer a psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, and mindfulness approach that weaves Indigenous Wisdom, Buddha-Dharma, and Earth-based practices. We work with each Season as a teacher, featuring a different guest speaker every Season, so that we may be in an intentional practice of connecting ourselves with the natural world.
About the Teacher:
Amelia Butler is an indigenous Māori woman, cultural practitioner and Māori cultural consultant from Aotearoa, New Zealand. She is the founder and director of Learn Māori Abroad, a global organization that shares Māori language, culture and performance online and in-person. Amelia attended Kōhanga Reo (Māori language preschool) at a young age and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. She went on to study te reo Māori (Māori language) by correspondence in high school and majored in Māori language, culture and performance in her Bachelor of Arts degree and Māori Land Law in her Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of Auckland. Amelia moved to Turtle Island (US) in 2009 and has shared Māori language & culture with various groups and organizations in the US including UCLA, University of Hawaii, University of Washington, Pacific Island Ethnic Arts Museum, Warner Bros Studios, Sony, Tourism New Zealand, Penguin Random House, Atlas Obscura and Intel. Amelia's tribal affiliation are Ngātiwai, Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Awa.