I echo Manolova et al. (2020, p.488), who believe that pivoting involves being flexible, moving in a context of flux and flow from a state of rootedness, and taking advantage of opportunities. To expand, I link this metaphor of pivoting and flow to the concept of the rhizome, coined by Deleuze and Guattari (as cited in St. Pierre, 2021). Contradictory to arboreal metaphors, which describe something stationary with a clear starting point and growth of branches in predictable patterns, Deleuze and Guattari introduce the philosophy that everything is always in a state of flow and becoming.

The movement of rhizomes holds a different quality of dispersal. Rhizomes are root systems that spread underground without direction, beginning, or end (Britannica, n.d.). The metaphor, therefore, describes the relationship and connectivity of things as branching, not linear. So here, I pivot in my thinking and recognise that perhaps I am both a tree and a rhizome, grounded and expanding in my thinking and practice.

Concerning my foray into psychotherapy, I recognise now that I was looking for an arboreal learning model, a stable place I could graft onto and grow from in a linear way. However, the grafting did not happen, and I was left with rhizomatic and dispersed learnings that led me to deeply consider the conditions for growth and professional development.

Creative arts therapy is the ground I have chosen to dance upon, dig into, and grow from. However, I sit with the deepening realisation that the ground of creative arts therapy in Aotearoa is relatively fresh when compared with other professions. Whitecliffe College established the only creative arts therapies master's programme in Aotearoa in the early 2000s (Whitecliffe, 2015). While it feels loamy and rich to me, it requires those of us traversing it to continue putting down rhizomatic roots and contributing to its ecological health and diversity.

The shadow side of way-makers

I reflect on the metaphor of pioneers and pilgrims in the context of creative arts therapy in Aotearoa. I sit with the awareness that these terms are loaded with colonisation with patriarchal energies and connotations. Rather than romanticise the metaphor, I include this awareness into my discussion, knowing that as way-makers in the creative arts therapy space, we are attempting to move into already-claimed territory in healthcare. We enter a context that favours a scientific, Western medical model of health and well-being. Uniquely, we straddle the medical and art worlds, and learn the languages of both domains. I experience this to be true for myself in the spaces where I work.

Pilgrims and pioneers carry dark histories of not only marginalising and discounting the land rights of Indigenous peoples, but also violently removing them for profit and power (Hamilton, 2002). The history of dispossession and trauma for Māori people in Aotearoa is not lost on me when I use these terms (Pihama et al., 2019). I am not an Indigenous wahine in Aotearoa. I am a first-generation Pākehā immigrant woman from Scotland. I sincerely appreciate that I can call this land home now, but contextualise it in the dark history that has given me the privilege to do so. I acknowledge the document of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a treaty supposed to bring partnership between the colonising Europeans and the Indigenous Māori (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, n.d.). Te Tiriti o Waitangi, penned in te reo Māori, states the statute of kāwanatanga, the concept of governance offered to the Crown. At the same time, tino rangatiratanga, self-governance, was still held by the Māori people over their lands, dwellings and possessions. The Treaty of Waitangi (a mistranslated version) misconstrues the understanding whereby the Crown was given absolute sovereignty over Māori lands. The Treaty of Waitangi became the legally binding version of the treaty and the reason I am privileged as an immigrant.

Creative arts therapy aligns much more with Indigenous approaches to health and well-being than with the medical model, as it invites a holistic approach to identity. Mason (2000, p.9) notes that “art and arts therapy can support indigenous peoples to strengthen identity with cultural values and beliefs”. Kaupapa Māori arts therapy research is growing in Aotearoa and is shaping the relationship between creative arts therapy and Indigenous models of well-being. Anita Vlasić Manaia, a pioneer in this space, notes in her 2017 paper that “the principles of Kaupapa Māori philosophies can be integrated into arts therapy and applied side by side in practice. There are commonalities between arts therapy practice, the strengthening of cultural identity, and a Māori worldview” (Vlasić Manaia, 2017, p.30).

When envisioning pioneers, I evoke more than the image of a 19th-century European breaking land and moving into occupied territory. I conceive of pioneers in contemporary fields making lives for themselves, introducing revolutionary ideas, and bravely asking questions that challenge the status quo. In the arts therapy world, the educator Margaret Naumburg and artist Edith Kramer are widely considered pioneers in our field. Stepping into new territories, Naumburg linked art to the expression of the unconscious and Kramer became an important figure in laying the groundwork for art therapy education (McCurdy et al., 2019). These women pioneered something and broke the land we now build from. Pioneers are individuals searching for a life and opportunities beyond those they have now. Pioneers must be able to dream, envision what is not yet possible, and create something for generations to come (McAdam, 2006). As modern-day creative arts therapy pilgrims, we journey into the intellectual, educational, and professional contexts that these pioneers established, and then move back out, transformed and orientated in a new way. Pilgrims are those who journey to holy, sacred spaces because they have heard that there is something magnificent there, and the walk itself is profoundly enlightening. I have walked a pilgrimage and experienced it as a deeply transformative process. The walk moved me into a “changing of location to reconfigure one’s inner orientation” (McGinn, 2005, p.93).