This study utilised a hermeneutic approach to investigate the literature about school disengagement through the lens of trauma and to see how the implementation of primary school counsellors in Aotearoa New Zealand could support trauma-informed school practices. A hermeneutic methodology suited this study for several reasons: research on trauma-informed schooling is in its infancy, there is a disconnect between discourse about helping young people and the resources available to support them, trauma-informed literature predominantly comes from Western perspectives and cannot readily be applied in Aotearoa, and such a methodology honours the engagement of researcher-as-participant, making use of their experiences in these contexts. Poetry was employed as an additional research method to express the dialogical encounters and embodied meaning-making that clarified the critical need to decolonise academic spaces. The findings are presented as a journey from considering the existing school system as one that is “broken” and “failing” children to one that is functioning as designed under the influences of colonisation, assimilation, power, and neoliberal ideas. The study ponders ideas of claimed knowledge and explores the resilience of young people in the face of marginalisation. Implications from these findings include the need and prospect for decolonising school counselling practices by centring the voices of disenfranchised young people to shape a mana-enhancing and context-specific approach to their trauma. This research calls for school counsellors to exist in the liminal spaces between trauma, counselling, and education.