Dr. Natasha Tassell-Matamua is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the School of Psychology at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is also co-Director of the recently established Centre for Indigenous Psychologies. Her research and teaching is in the area of indigenous psychologies, and in particular the utilisation of indigenous knowledges to effect meaningful change across a range of contexts. Her research typically focusses on the interplay between spirituality, well-being and the wider ecosystem. However, she has spent the last decade researching the phenomenology, after-effects and cultural specificity of near-death experiences, and has published extensively in the area as well as providing numerous presentations both nationally and internationally.
Writing about universalism in NDEs, Natasha Tassell-Matuma explains that "Languages reflect the cosmologies, ontologies, and epistemologies underlying cultures and are mutually constitutive in a culture’s practices, beliefs, ideologies, and norms. As such, when people speak, they are essentially drawing on a collective legacy that speaks to the socially-sanctioned worldview of the culture they affiliate with."
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