THE ACTIVATING PRINCIPLE OF MAURI: A COVID-19 RESPONSE
This current pandemic has afforded many of those advocating for systemic change in Aotearoa a real opportunity to critique, and also to amplify the relentlessness of non-Covid-19 developments and its input into a Covid-19-fuelled forecast of adverse consequences for our whānau — of which the more significant dire consequences failed to materialise, and for the very best reasons too.
Terms and thinking, such as the ‘new normal’, returning back to ‘business as usual’ and Māori ‘taking matters into their own hands’ (LIKE WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?) have been bandied about ad nauseam to the point where the veneer of getting to the other end of this pandemic has completely lost its element of pretense. The questions are confronting; what is our traditional normal? Why should we go back to the usual? Who are we NOT to rise to the challenge? Covid-19 has provided a particularly sympathetic backdrop from which to really start having these courageous conversations; and to begin to examine, process and redress what comes with that — because, as people have already commented — we simply cannot go back to the way things were.
Here in Whangaroa in the Far North of Aotearoa, ‘business as usual’ comes with its own set of insights and dilemmas. Much discussion has been had about business as usual (B.A.U.) pre, during and post Covid-19, but what even is BAU for Māori?
The premise of this commentary is to call out the BAU for what it is; a system of assimilation that became more palpably felt and visibilised as a direct result of whānau, hapū, iwi and marae collectives mobilising against Covid-19 and its predicted, catastrophic impact on vulnerable, rurally isolated Māori communities — a tragedy averted; credited to the Māori response.
The BAU in Aotearoa has a multitude of different names and faces. Mostly, we know it as ‘the system’, an inequitable juggernaut that has failed, is failing, and will continue to fail Māori because of its inability to honour our past and afford us our place at the table as partners in a treaty that binds the Crown and tāngata whenua to an agreement that reclaims our truth (Jackson, 2013), and our sovereign right to be self-determining. Instead, Māori have been colonised, assimilated, marginalised and made to live with an accumulation of grievances and broken promises that have been ongoing since before Te Tiriti o Waitangi was first signed in 1840.
Mid-March 2020 in the Far North, and the imminent threat of Covid-19 is a call to action. Historically, the whānau here understand what it is to be helpless and ravaged by epidemics. One of the pūrākau from the area is of three capes gifted to a local hapū that were deliberately infected with smallpox. The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 raged uncontrolled through Māori settlements, and in its wake lay a people decimated. The psychological toll associated with the experience of being defined by this history is more than enough reason to choose to want to forget, or be immobilised by the trauma. Instead, these invaluable lessons from the past helped rally the troops against a common enemy that was more than just the pandemic itself; it was also born out of activism inflamed by the inaction of others, and also the inactivity of some of our own.
No one knows what to expect, but we prepare for the worst. It has been ingrained in us to think this way, because of our history, and also by virtue of being so enmeshed in the business as usual mentality that already accepts that it will fail Māori. Although, 100-plus years of living with the fear of an epidemic jolts many of us back into a reality that starts like this: if we don’t do anything, then we have learnt nothing from our historical experiences of this threat to our culture, current population and future generations. Hence, a Covid-19 emergency response plan was born out of our need to protect our whānau, because to do nothing would mean we are complicit by default with the BAU-fed assumption that Māori are victims of their own circumstance (Mitchell, 2009, 2011, 2017).
The majority of our Healthy Families Far North team are redeployed by Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa as essential workers, and these team members provide the back office and hub for the distribution of whānau ora kai and hygiene packs to kuia, kaumātua and whānau of Whangaroa (Māori and also non-Māori). The rūnanga pays for kai even before knowing whether it would be funded. We are aware of whānau who have set up a road checkpoint to protect this rohe and its people. We learn who is doing what for the local marae and community distribution of these care packs. We quickly become low-fi and savvy, and it boosts the efficiency of our distribution hub systems. What we don’t ask ourselves is why are we doing this? Why have we said that we will do this Covid-19 response, when really, we could have just said no.
The potential impact of our Healthy Families Far North mahi comes from our close proximity to Far North whānau, hapū, iwi and communities. We are locals who live, learn, work and play here in the Far North, walking the talk of our localised multiple realities, knowing that these are the very realities that need to be captured and woven into real solutions and strategies crafted by our communities. With this commentary we also look to connect the dots between the mobilisation of Māori who responded to Covid-19, and the reasons why they put their hand up to help. We get to employ some of the preventative health measures we are trained in; the tools of our trade such as co-design that gives whānau an ability to talk back, to be insightful and self-determining about the collective state of our health and wellbeing. We use a systems approach so we are more aware of emergent patterns and practices that inform a theory of change towards impactful systems change. We are part of the kāhui Māori, a ‘whānau-ā-kaupapa’ of Healthy Families practitioners and sites engaged in mātauranga Māori and practices serving our communities. We do not want to unconsciously fall back into ‘business as usual’, and so our team with intention choose the ‘path unanticipated’ ensuing from these extraordinary times.
What we come to understand through this journey is that for many, being a part of business as usual is just a concession that is made to get ahead. What we realise about the BAU system is that it quietly allows people to get on with their everyday lives, while making it almost impossible to consistently respond or actively be Māori. The BAU mentality not only suppresses our responsiveness to Māori kaupapa, it also reinforces the ongoing and invisible, mostly silent epidemics that are completely devastating our communities, and that sadly this is normalised via the status quo. Examples from the snapshots (Fig. 1.) relating to areas such as health, education and justice capture just how overwhelming this data is.
So here it is then. This is a wero to those in the BAU system who through choosing not to respond, automatically become agents of that system — become enablers of these imploding epidemics with their actions made obvious through continued apathy. Based on our experiences of Covid-19, the message that needs to be clearly sent is that when we are not activated by a Māori response, we are enabling business as usual.
Understanding what is happening through the states of mauri (Durie, 2001, Durie, 2011, Pohatu, 2011) is our teams way of coming full circle in our knowing that the work continues. Mauri oho is the activating principle of mauri. If it were a person her name would be Brenda who puts her hand up to help in the distribution hub because she remembers her Nanny talking about the impacts of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, and she feels compelled to do whatever she can. It is Haki who still needs to keep doing his own BAU job to support his whānau, but does what he is able to in the background with the road checkpoint. Brenda and Haki both know that they are part of something greater than themselves, and they are grateful to be able to contribute something, even when it’s a thankless job or no one knows they’re helping.
Matekiri (disappointing, dissatisfied) as a person would be Jill, who has done very well with self-promotion and political posturing in her BAU, government funded role that is meant to be there to support the community, except Jill refuses to leave her office and she thinks that she knows everything anyway so asking the community what they need seems like a complete and utter waste of her time. It is Bob who loves his weekly paycheck so just does enough to keep up the appearance that he is doing mahi when really, he has no clue. Bob however, finds himself roped into delivering kai packs to whānau, so he begins to understand the persona of mauri moe, and what it might feel like to be driven by purpose and to be activated by that.
Māha (satisfied, contented) is “not one single Māori death in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic”. This is our teams moemoeā and practice of the activating principle of mauri oho. Māha is also our teams capacity to think in a systems way about what we have learnt from our collective experiences (see Fig. 2.), and to understand how mātauranga Māori can help to activate and engender a response to these silent epidemics such as the Māori health crisis that will continue to plague our people, but still be accepted as business as usual.
The BAU exists and its assimilative game is strong. If we do not actively respond as Māori (whether overtly or undercover), we essentially are colluding with the system, and more so if this is also driven by greed, power and ego. If we have not woken up to the influence of the ‘business as usual’ mindset, then we can easily fall victim to a system that is fed and helped to grow through the watering down of our thoughts and actions, diverted away from anything resembling an engaged and intentioned Māori response. Being activated is understanding that we have mauri, and this is an energy we can use to either support the kaupapa or support the BAU — because to do both makes no sense. If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic should give us more conviction to wero ourselves and our people to activate, or else make way for those of us that will, and are, activating.
Author/s: Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa team, Healthy Families Far North team, Dr. Moana Mitchell.
REFERENCES
Durie, M. (2001). Mauri ora: The dynamics of Māori health. Oxford University Press.
Durie, M. K. (2011). He kawa oranga: Māori achievement in the 21st century: a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Māori Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (Doctoral dissertation, Massey University).
Jackson, M. (2013). Research and the Colonisation of Maori Knowledge. He Pukenga Korero, 4(1).
Mitchell, M. E. (2009). “All We Got to See Were Factories.”: Scoping Maori Transitions from Secondary School. Unpublished masters thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Mitchell, M. (2011). Attending to the (un)comfort zone: A student experience of te reo me ōna tikanga in kaupapa Māori research. Paper presented at the Kei Tua o te Pae Hui Proceedings: The Challenges of Kaupapa Māori Research in the 21st Century, Pipitea Marae.
Mitchell, M. (2017). Ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea: Emergent Māori experiences of education employment transition.Unpublished PhD dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Pohatu, T. W. (2011). Mauri: Rethinking human wellbeing. Mai Review, 3, 1–12.
Snapshot Sources:
Houkamau, C., Kingi, H., & Blank, A. (2016). Unconscious bias and education A comparative study of Māori and African American students. Oranui Press.
Matthews, P. (2018, 3 June). ‘Cunning, deceitful savages’: 200 years of Māori bad press’. Retrieved from: https:// www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/103871652/cunning-deceitful-savages-200-years-of-mori-bad-press
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2019). Māori in the labour market — June 2019. Wellington:
Ministry of Social Development. (2016). The Social Report 2016. Wellington: Ministry of Social Development. Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
New Zealand Police. (2018). Tactical Options Research (TOR) report. Wellington: New Zealand.
Waitemata District Health Board. (2014). Determinants Of Health For Children And Young People In The Northern DHBs 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.waitematadhb.govt.nz/assets/Documents/health-reports/ DeterminantsOfHealthForChildrenAndYoungPeopleInTheNorthernDHBs2014.pdf
Printed courtesy of Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa, 2020
