A Māori researcher is pleading with the Government to properly partner with Māori to get vaccination rates up.
While New Zealand’s vaccination rate is creeping up with 79 per cent of Kiwis, aged 12 and over, have now had their first doses, the rate for Māori is much lower - under 60 per cent.
It adds to already alarming figures which show Māori currently suffer disproportionately poor health outcomes with a life expectancy seven years shorter than non-Māori.
Author, researcher and Māori advocate Tina Ngata told Breakfast on Wednesday morning all those figures stem from broken relationship.
“The trust hasn’t flowed towards Māori communities,” Ngata said.
“We haven’t been trusted with the roles at the decision-making table, we haven’t been trusted with a proper partnership role even though the securing of that partnership role is part of the document upon which the power of Government rests, Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
“The Government still isn’t trusting us with the power to be able to run this even though we’ve demonstrated we can do it well and trust has to go both ways.”
Ngata is part of one of the rare Māori communities in the country to have high vaccination rates for tangata whenua, with Tairawhiti Māori above 90 per cent for getting the jab.
She told Breakfast that was because of their efforts on the ground.
“Here where I live in Matakaoa we have been able to reach the vast majority of our adult population and certainly our senior population,” she said.
“We know what is behind that – it’s Māori, by Māori, for Māori approach which is devolving decision-making and planning to Māori providers and iwi and even down to hapu level to make plans.
“We know our people.”
Instead, Ngata said Māori are turning their backs on a system they feel has already done the same to them.
“The Government knows that we have high mortality rates and we’ve had high mortality rates because of Government negligence and racism and colonialism in the system for a long time – it was part of the Hauora claim in front of the Waitangi Tribunal and was part of the principle behind the Māori Health Authority.
“Groups were telling Government last year in relation to Covid what needed to be done nationally in order for that same issue to play out again in a Covid context and they weren’t listened to.”
Ngata said the situation had “multiple layers of injustice”.
“The first is the fact that there’s a lack of Te Tiriti partnership and instead it’s being relegated to Māori advise or input or, ‘Māori, give us your wishlist and we’ll see what we can do about it’, but that’s not partnership or powersharing.
“The second thing is this was foreseen and forewarned and now we’re having to play catch-up because Māori weren’t prioritised and we’re being told essentially through the easing of restrictions now that the Government isn’t going to wait for us to catch up even though they forced us into this situation.
“Being made to catch up on your own land in an issue of survival is just deeply cruel.”
Ngata said a third issue was that the situation wasn’t being portrayed as a long-standing colonial injustice.
“It’s being framed instead as Māori defiance and Māori not caring about Aotearoa… it’s just deeply unfair.”
Ngata said the only way forward is joint decision making with Māori around the future of New Zealand.
“When you say ‘we’ as in ‘we as a nation’ are ready to move ahead with easing restrictions, you’re leaving Māori out.”
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