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Sexual violence victimisation remains a pervasive sexual and reproductive justice issue for Indigenous women globally (UNFPA and CHIRAPAQ 2018). In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori (Indigenous) women are twice as likely to be impacted by sexual violence than other women (Fanslow et al. 2007), and it is estimated that around one quarter of young Māori women have experienced some form of forced sex by the age of 18 (Clark et al. 2016). Research has also noted concern about non-consensual sex experienced by takatāpui i, and vulnerability associated with being newly “out of the closet” within wider gay networks (Aspin et al. 2009). This issue is overlooked and overshadowed by dominant blaming discourses that suggest Māori youth are “problematic”(Moewaka Barnes 2010). Psychological impacts of sexual violence are often severe, wide ranging, potentially traumatising, and shape people’s lives in complex ways (Gavey and Schmidt 2011; Le Grice 2017).

The pervasive presence and extensive impact of sexual violence on Māori occurs against a backdrop of individualising and cultural deficit explanations that blame Māori culture and individual victims (Le Grice 2019). The harms of historical and ongoing colonisation are oft denied in national narratives (O’Malley and Kidman 2018) and rarely understood in contextualising Māori experiences of sexual violence (Cavino 2016; Pihama et al. 2016). If unaddressed, sexual violence is a serious public health and social issue. Yet, racism pervades