Dr Debi Futter-Puati
Kia orana kōtou. Tōku ingoa ko Debi Futter-Puati, nō Aotearoa mai au. E no‘o au i Tikioki, nō roto mai ia vaka Takitumu
I have lived in the Cook Islands since January 2003 and have been part of a Cook Islands family for many years with two children and three grandchildren. I spent most of my childhood growing up in Wellington.
I began my academic journey at Ako Pai: Wellington College of Education which then became Victoria University. I continued on from there while working as a Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour doing a Post Graduate Diploma in Education Studies. After working at the Cook Islands Ministry of Education and then the Cook Islands Ministry of Health, I then did a Masters in History at University of Auckland exploring Maki Maro: Tuberculosis in the Cook Islands 1896 - 1975. In 2017 I completed a PhD. My doctorate, Api'ianga Tupuanga Kopapa: Sexuality education in the Cook Islands investigated sex, sexuality and sexuality education with 674 mapu.
My research interests lie across a variety of spaces: social research particularly within the contexts of Pacific health and wellbeing, Education, Youth and Gender, Indigenous Research Methodologies and Practice.
“Foucault argued that ‘People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p.187, as cited in Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). Educating people about the impact of ‘what what they do does’ to others is important to me in the name of equity and social justice. ”