Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa – Te ORA Awards Dinner

  • Tariana Turia
Health

I want to acknowledge Dr George Laking, your Chair and Te Rina Moke, your Chief Executive Officer for the opportunity to be here with you all.

I have been greatly looking forward to this hui – to celebrate our medical graduates, medical fellows, medical practitioners, health workers and health professionals.

By virtue of the career you have chosen you have opted for a life of passion, a life of selfless commitment to the greater good – the wellbeing of the people.   It is good to be in your company.

I am so very humbled by the honour of receiving the Maarire Goodall Award and so proud that this night is being held here at home.  There is no place I would rather be than to be here in our tribal sanctuary with those who do so much to help us achieve the fullest definition of health.

Just to be with you all is good for the soul.

And to be honest, don’t we all need a bit of soul sustenance after the last few weeks of political attack and innuendo?

We – as Māori – have been fed a constant diet of talk about poverty – the plight of te pani me te rawa kore. 

We – as Māori – have been ruled out of any Government formed by Labour and relegated to redundancy by the leaders of New Zealand First and the Conservatives.

We – as Māori – have been side-lined from the issues which others have defined as important for this campaign.

In this ever-busy world of Facebook and television on demand, these images can be constantly replayed - a new truth created.

But I remind us - it is a virtual reality in every aspect of the word.

Because I know as much as you, that no technology, no matter how fast, can ever replace the human spark of spirit, of love, and understanding that keeps us well, our confidence high.

The artificial environment we have observed over the last six weeks bears little relevance to the lives of the people you work alongside. Political polls and digital graphics are magnificent tools of the imagination, but they will never determine the scope of our dreams, the potential of our ambition.  Contrary to the perception being painted many of our families are doing amazing things, achieving the seemingly impossible.

And really, that is my message for us tonight – to have faith in us, to restore to ourselves that special way of knowing we can be the world we want to see.

I ask ourselves what could be so bad as to place trust in tāngata whenua?   What is there to fear from our whānau?

We are all engineers of our own destiny and all of you within Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa know better than most the relentless power of hope and belief in oneself.

I have been looking at the various venue in which this Hui-a-Tau has been held over the past seventeen years, Waahi Pa, Hongoeka, Owae, Otakou, Porangahau, Waipapa, Parihaka.

Each of these marae provide a powerful context – a physical environment rich with a history which has given you a foundation of inspiration and encouragement as you reflect on your own journey.  

A journey which I have no doubt could feel overwhelming at times. There is no question that the massive under-representation of Māori doctors in the workforce brings with it a particular set of challenges.  

Over the last decade the highest proportion of doctors identifying as Māori was 3.1 percent in 2008, the most recent statistics in 2012 were 2.9 percent. 

The challenge of under-representation is present at every level of the health system.   The New Zealand Health and Disability Act 2000 provided for regional Māori representation in DHB health governance, but unfortunately we have witnessed underwhelming delivery in recent years, with some boards struggling to even maintain one Māori director.

I am absolutely certain that when we introduced the legislation in 2000 we were determined that there should be at least two Māori directors and in an areas with higher Māori population, three or four.  We should never tolerate a situation by which individuals become the sole advocate for Māori health. 

Earlier this year Dr Joy Panoho released her doctoral thesis on the experiences of Māori directors on DHBs.   All but one of the eighteen directors she interviewed said that tokenism, stereotyping and political correctness were common.    They described fulfilling the role of a ‘walking Treaty workshop’ – regardless of their best intentions there were enormous gaps in understanding about Māori expertise and Māori health gain.

Yet Dr Panoho described the flaxroots experience that Māori directors brought as an important strategic tool for DHBs. All of these three groups then – the Māori Party; Māori medical practitioners or Māori directors on DHBs have many challenges and barriers in front of them that could prove difficult.

And this is where I come back to Dr Maarire Goodall, Whangaehu Marae and all of us here as members of whānau, hapū and iwi.  

Dr Goodall not only served his life in advancing cancer research, he was determined to bring others along with him and devoted himself to a mentor role with Māori graduates of Otago Medical School.   His leadership serves to remind us of one question – who are we bringing along with us?

And I want to refer to one issue that has dominated the last few weeks – the elimination of poverty. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.   We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

That really is magic of Whānau Ora.  I am tired of being defined by what we don’t have, what we lack, all our problems.  It is so much more important to focus on our strengths and abilities, our inherent richness in the whakapapa we all inherit. We must be brave enough to tackle material poverty, to devise solutions and strategies at every level. But we must never desist from taking steps within our own whānau to care for one another, to take collective responsibility, to lift ourselves up.   We can confront the poverty of spirit and we can do that in innumerable ways to enhance our overall health and wellbeing.

You know I was thinking when I was young, the first time I ever came into contact was when I went to boarding school.  Up until that time we had a thousand pairs of eyes watching over us, keeping us well, protecting us from harm.

As a child at times we stayed in Ratana Pā.  They practised Whānau Ora every day. Every home was a place you would be fed.   No-one had much materially but we were wealthy in what we had together.  I believe that is truly our greatest challenge ahead of us – to restore our time-honoured practices, to care for our own, to realise that transformation of our health and wellbeing is in our own hands; to dare to be powerful.

In one week’s time our fate as a nation for the next three years will be known. Whatever the polls decide, we know for certain that come Sunday morning we will still wake up to the greatest opportunity before us – to ensure every whānau knows the power of their potential, understands the opportunities ahead of us and works with every fibre of their body to make their whānau their top priority. 

We must never be swayed into thinking a politician, a provider, others can determine our destiny, can do ‘to and for us’ on our behalf.   Let us call the shots, let us be our own preferred provider – the whānau that gives us life.

Over the last few weeks I have had more than a few moments of sadness as I think about the wonderful people I have come into contact with and the incredible lifetime memories I have experienced over the last eighteen years.

But I have also felt the most wonderful sense of hope because of the confidence I have in champions such as yourselves, who do what you do out of faith in our families and belief in their ability to do what is right.

Whether it is in achieving health-gain, addressing poverty, negotiating whānau outcomes, the greatest resource we have available is an attitude of optimism, a belief in transformation.   We need to continue doing what it takes to enable families to make life changing choices and to know that there is support in place to enable our families to continue to feel supported in taking back control over their lives.

Finally, it is only right to acknowledge the source of my greatest motivation is all around us here – they have given me every reason to believe and I thank them for always being here.