Chapter 5: Mothering Under Watch: Māori Women, Residential Drug Rehabilitation, and the Politics of Institutional Surveillance

This chapter examines how surveillance – rooted in colonization, racism, structural barriers, and the erosion of Māori (Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand) customs and protocols – shapes the experiences of Māori women navigating parenting, addiction, and recovery in a residential rehabilitation program in Aotearoa New Zealand. The program, funded by the state child protection agency, operates within Western institutional frameworks that can conflict with a Māori worldview. The study aimed to understand how Māori mothers experience recovery in this setting, what supports their well-being, and what undermines it. Using Te Wāhi Whāngai (a Māori methodology grounded in arts-based research and relational practice), women described how surveillance by staff, peers, and themselves shaped their recovery and sense of self. The findings suggest that meaningful transformation lies in shifting from state-regulated models of motherhood toward Māori-led, community-based approaches to mothering, with the voices of the mothers themselves placed at the center of change.