“Cultural safety is actually an optimistic idea. It assumes that we can learn about one another, that doctors can examine their assumptions and change, that patients can teach us, and that encountering another way of seeing the world will open our eyes and our minds.” — Dr Orna McGinn.
Read More
“In that moment with my son, I was standing on the edge of a line that must not be crossed. But so many other Māori men have crossed it.” — Tīhema Baker, author of ‘One Day a Taniwha’.
Read More
“We have a right to the best healthcare and the best health outcomes that are available. And we have a right to be part of creating the solutions when those rights aren’t being met. So advocacy needs to be part of an excellent health system.” — Professor Matire Harwood.
Read More
“Over the years, the questions have ranged from ‘Why do we need a Māori cultural liaison person at our workplace?’ to ‘How do we have hard conversations with colleagues to do better?’” — Atakohu Middleton on the questions people put in the Too-Hard Basket.
Read More
“It is one of the rare times that Māori have been less impacted by a disease than Europeans and provides a clear example of how much better Māori do when we are able to exercise self-determination and control our own lives.” — Professor Margaret Mutu, on the Māori response to Covid-19 in 2020.
Read More
“Living while dying, grieving while anticipating, good days and appalling days, happiness and despair, all co-exist quite comfortably within te ao Māori.” — Jacquie Kidd, on how whakapapa has guided her since she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Read More
“We were told that a large number of our classmates had complained about being forced to sleep communally and subjected to learning things that they considered irrelevant to their nursing programme.” — Jacquie Kidd, on the tentative first steps to introduce Māori concepts into nursing.
Read More
“You can’t separate the conditions in which people live from their health. They’re completely interwoven, and I absolutely feel a deep sense of responsibility and commitment to addressing those wider determinants.” — Dr Corina Grey, Director of Public Health.
Read More
“We will no longer be tasked with local service design and delivery. Instead, our job will be to ‘engage’ and ’advise’. These changes take us from active partners to passive recipients.” — Louisa Wall on changes to Pae Ora law.
Read More
“If our tamariki grow up in neighbourhoods where liquor stores are closer than libraries, where pokies outnumber playgrounds, and vape shops are easier to find than doctors, then our babies are pushing against strong headwinds.” — Hikitia Ropata.
Read More
“In my experience working with Māori clients, I’ve seen how some cases of mental health challenges like depression, anxiety and even memory and concentration difficulties can be better understood through the lens of ongoing discrimination, intergenerational poverty and housing instability.” — Carrie Clifford.
Read More
“What they do today won’t destroy what we’ll be doing tomorrow. That’s why I keep doing this work. Because if we don’t exercise rangatiratanga over our health, we’re always going to be at the beck and call of successive governments.” — Lady Tureiti Moxon.
Read More
“Now is the time, we argue, for Māori organisations to develop hospitals to provide Māori, particularly older Māori, with culturally-safe care.” — Marama Muru-Lanning and Hilary Lapsley.
Read More
“We start losing our loved ones earlier than our tangata Tiriti peers. We go to more tangi. We are less likely to experience being the ‘sandwich generation’ who raise their own children and moko while also caring for elderly parents.” — Tui MacDonald.
Read More
“We’ve got the pandemic of HIV, we’ve got a pandemic of Covid, and, in my eyes, we also have a pandemic in relation to suicide. There are commonalities right across those three areas that disproportionately affect Māori.” — Associate Professor Clive Aspin.
Read More
“‘That nurse was really rude,’ I told Jaye as we walked out of the exam room in Auckland Hospital. She rolled her eyes at me impatiently. ‘That’s why I brought you. To see the way people who look like me get treated.’” — Eru Hart.
Read More
“What’s improved is that we’ve got these pockets of Māori excellence . . . But our general health sector is just as racist as it’s ever been, and our outcomes are just as poor as they’ve ever been.” — Dr Jacquie Kidd.
Read More
“One of the beautiful things that I’ve seen in my work is that when you implement equity structures into health systems then Māori do just as well as non-Māori. Pākehā don’t start doing badly — everyone starts doing well.” — Dr Maxine Ronald, General Surgeon.
Read More
“I went to medical school to train to be a Māori doctor. Not a doctor, a Māori doctor.” — Dr Emma Espiner.
Read More
“I knew that I’d got into med school with one of the lowest marks in the class, but I finished med school in the top 20 per cent, which I think goes to show that supporting Māori into med school is important.” — Dr Sue Crengle.
Read More
“There were so few Māori or Pacific students. We felt we had the ‘future of the people’ on our shoulders. We stood out — and we were determined to do well.” — Dr David Tipene-Leach on being a medical student in the 1970s.
Read More
“Something that we’ve found, which Māori should be so proud of, is that our culture provides proven protective factors against mate wareware (dementia).” — Dr Makarena Dudley.
Read More
“Our research confirms the cost of keeping Māori sick is many millions of dollars. Saving Māori lives is not only good for Māori, it will save the country money.” — Professor Papaarangi Reid.
Read More
“We want it to be normal that Māori success happens because of the policies and procedures that are in place within our universities, not in spite of them.” — Professor Suzanne Pitama.
Read More
“We’re dealing with a societal good that is much broader than an individual focus.” — Professor Joanne Baxter, dean of the University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine.
Read More
“We run it by Māori, for Māori — but we take everyone with us. And I figured, if we could do that locally, what if we could pull it off nationally?” — Riana Manuel, who heads the new Māori Health Authority.
Read More
“One privilege that comes with being senior is that I see my job as creating an environment where discrimination is just not acceptable.” — Margie Apa, chief executive of Health NZ.
Read More
“If the government had listened to our experts, and itself, all these months, Māori could have been 90 percent vaccinated by now,” writes Vini Olsen-Reeder, who’s sick of Māori being blamed for being slow to vaccinate.
Read More
“The indisputable fact that the Crown funds the primary health care system inadequately is a key reason for the extent of inequity that Māori continue to suffer.” — Waitangi Tribunal report on Stage One of Hauora claims.
Read More
“Mainstream health hasn’t done wairua well, or whānau well. So we’ve developed our own Māori model of health care.” — Dr Lily Fraser.
Read MoreE-Tangata is an online Sunday magazine specialising in stories that reflect the experiences of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa.
We welcome submissions or inquiries to:
editor@e-tangata.co.nz
Sign up for our email newsletter and get the latest E-Tangata stories sent straight to your inbox.
SubscribeYou can support E-Tangata’s kaupapa by contributing through PressPatron. With your help, we can tell more Māori and Pacific stories.
