There
is a clinking of glass, a pause, a ‘mauri ora’ or two,
and a bottoms up as a group of keen rongoā Māori
practitioners test out their fresh batch of pātētē
infusion on a typical Friday morning in Kaitāia.
They
are Tuia Maara Whenua, one of four rongoā Māori hubs that
form the Te Hiku Rongoā Māori Collective, and they are at
the forefront of redressing health equity for traditional
hauora Māori practices on the incoming tide of current
health system reforms.
The Te Hiku Rongoā Māori
Collective is a Te Hiku-wide network of traditional rongoā
Māori practitioners with clinics that span across north
Hokianga, west, central, and eastern communities, that
provides Māori-based health and wellbeing services to rural
whānau.
Individually, each hub has been holding space
on the ground for access to rongoā Māori for a long time.
Now, they have received boost in support to collectively
continue their work under the Taikorihi locality, one of 12
national prototypes set up under the Pae Ora (Healthy
Futures) Act 2022 to influence and inform the future
investment of public health in New Zealand.
The
collective has received funding via Te Whatu Ora through the
Taikorihi innovation fund to collaborate and collectivise
services and approaches to inform what future investment in
rongoā Māori in Te Hiku could look like.
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“A lot of
whānau have been asking for options to access traditional
rongoā Māori. We need to be seen at the forefront, just as
much as any other hauora service provision.
Our
whānau are screaming for it and still want it. We just want
to be able to do it and get resourcing because we all know
the deficit kōrero around our whānau. We can work with our
own, in our communities, to address those inequities within
the health sector,” she says.
And it
works.
Soul Within’s Bernie Brophy operates from
Mitimiti to cover the north Hokianga catchment area. She
says demand for her services in romiromi and wairua work
from birth to death to aftercare is high.
“We’ve
found a lot more grief, loss, and stress on top of the cost
of living. For our whānau accessing healthcare, what that
looks like is they can’t get in to see doctors for two
weeks to a month in some situations.
There is lots of
desperation, because there isn’t that immediate medical
care available, when kānohi ki te kānohi is where our
people connect from,” she says.
She says the advent
of COVID enabled many practitioners to move into a digital
space to continue to provide services.
“We still
work online today because of the accessibility. We call it
the eight-minute lifeline. If someone needs to talk, we just
ring, connect and do what we’ve got to do, and do it fast,
and let it go because people are in such dire straits. It
only takes eight minutes of somebody listening for them to
be able to move and shift their psyche from the darkest of
places,” she says.
Joanne adds that witnessing time
and again the impact of rongoā Māori to heal whānau
firsthand is validating and supports the evidential data
being gathered by the collective on health stressors from
their observations working with whānau.
“The
stories are just as important as the data. In fact, they are
probably more important. I’ve seen people come into clinic
with wheelchairs and with walkers and walk out without
them,” she says.
The current central hub hosts
wānanga under the tutelage of kuia and kaumātua who Joanne
says are critical in sharing the intergenerational
transmission of rongoā Māori knowledge alive in
contemporary times.
“It’s around that retention of
mātauranga rongoā. If we don’t share it, we’ll lose it.
It is not just about providing the rongoā, but also
providing the opportunity to learn how to harvest, how to
prep it, and how to make it. It’s that whole idea around
gifting the fish or gifting the fishing rod,” she
says.
Joanne says that the 2024 Taikorihi innovation
funding has provided a valuable boost to what rongoā Māori
practitioners have been accustomed to operating on, the
equivalent of the “smell of an oily rag” and there is a
high need for services.
“We have also contributed to
the local pātaka in town for some time with whanau rongoā
packs because the struggle is real up here right now, and
some people just don’t even have kai, let alone money to
go to the chemist and doctors,” she says,
The
collective has already helped organise a number of wānanga
and is getting ready for the upcoming Te Tai Tokerau Rongoā
Māori Hui-ā-Rohe being hosted at Otiria Marae in Moerewa
from 3 to 4 August, as they are also part of a wider Te Tai
Tokerau Rongoā Māori Collective.
They are working
with a number of kura running workshops, and the Hokianga
hub has extended services into their local kura with
students and whānau.
Collaboration with other health
service providers is also underway, including Te Hiku Hauora
– who have provided critical support with additional
overheads, resourcing and training – and The Moko
Foundation, who have provided access to future innovation
and research for rongoā Māori with the Mātauranga
Hub.
Joanne says they are all working together to
achieve a common goal – to address equity to access for
quality primary health care services across different
populations throughout Te Hiku ō Te Ika.
“For me,
it’s about us working smarter together so that our whānau
know they can get optimum resourcing and service that we can
provide as a collective because each one of us can provide a
different part that the whānau wouldn’t have been able to
access from just one,” she says.
Taikorihi Programme
Manager JJ Ripikoi says rongoā Māori is a priority focus
area for the Taikorihi locality because it addresses one of
the key issues about barriers to access and availability of
healthcare in the Far North.
He adds that the data and
insights gathered from the Te Hiku Rongoā Māori Collective
initiative, alongside 12 other initiatives rolling out
across Te Hiku, will be combined over the next 12 months to
influence recommendations for future public health
investment in Te Hiku.
The Tuia Maara Whenua meets
each ‘Fabulous Friday’ from 10am to 2pm for rongoā
preparation, workshops and shared kai at 168 Commerce
Street, Kaitāia. All are welcome and for more information,
visit
https://www.facebook.com/tuia.maarawhenua.
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