Determined to defeat their destiny

(From left) BetaBody Gym owner Manuera Riwai with fellow Bros Files members Mak Parangi, Hepa Stephens and Rocky Manga. Photo / Paul Estcourt

When Rapine Robert (Rob) Murray went to his doctor with heart problems, the doctor drew a sign on Murray's ample belly and wrote: "Nil by mouth".

To the South African-born doctor in Kaitaia, it was a light-hearted way of telling Murray to get serious about reducing his then 224kg bulk.

But he didn't know his patient. Murray, 45, is a partner in a company with 20,000 beehives, exporting manuka honey around the world for medicinal use. His mother, Ngati Kuri kuia Saana Murray, lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal on behalf of all Maori for the right to income from Maori intellectual property.

"I refused to go and see the doctor because of the way I was being treated," Murray says.

"He was hurting my pride orally - which I didn't let him see, I would laugh about it and walk out.

"I was very, very upset in my heart. I was crying because I felt he was telling me off, you know what I mean? I don't mind that - but a man's dignity is important."

Around the same time, school maths adviser Makoare (Mak) Parangi, 51, started a new job as principal of Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rangiawhia, a small Maori-language primary school on the Karikari Peninsula where many children had switched off education.

"When I started, the absenteeism was really high. I was lucky to get one student with 70 per cent attendance," he says.

"They didn't think they could do it."

His friend, Rocky Manga, 53, a former Telecom technician, says many Maori kids can't understand the relevance of a subject like algebra.

"Our parents do labouring jobs. We don't have to smarten up to do that, do we?" is the thinking.

Pakeha teachers respond by "putting them all in the same boat".

"No one's listening, so they just show off," says Manga. "They shut down."

These grassroots experiences, repeated from Kaitaia to Bluff, have national consequences. Last year 45 per cent of the babies born in this country were Maori or Pacific.

On current form, as the figures on this page show, about half of those babies will fail at school, they will be less likely to work, they will earn a sixth less than Pakeha babies if they do work, and they will die eight to nine years sooner.

"What is the waste of potential?" asks Professor Michael Walker, co-director of Auckland University's Maori research centre Nga Pae o te Maramatanga ("Horizons of Insight").

"What you have is a whole culture which represents the single biggest intellectual opportunity available to New Zealand - and we have thrown that away."

Significantly, Te Puni Kokiri researcher Paul Hamer found signs of much less "waste" when he surveyed the one in every six Maori who now live in Australia.

"People move there because they feel that by doing so they can step outside those limiting expectations that Pakeha have of them and the limiting expectations they have of themselves because of that environment," he says.

"Some said that when they lived in New Zealand, their whanau accused them of being 'white' or 'Pakeha' if they sought to enlighten themselves or enrich their lives in any way," he wrote in his 2007 report.

A woman in Perth told him: "It's not a crime anymore to try and be financially comfortable or to have stability or be intelligent."

Tariana Turia, the Maori Party co-leader who is associate minister responsible for both Maori health and Maori/Pacific employment, believes Maori are held back in their homeland by "institutional racism".

She points to research showing, for example, that Maori suffer higher rates of heart disease than Pakeha, yet doctors request lipid and glucose blood tests at lower rates for Maori than for non-Maori in the at-risk age group from 35 to 64.

In the Ministry of Health's 2002-03 NZ Health Survey, Maori were three times as likely as Europeans to say they had been treated unfairly in the health system because of their ethnicity, and 13 times as likely to say they had been treated unfairly in the housing market.

These differences in treatment, plus socio-economic differences, almost entirely accounted for the groups' different health outcomes. In other words, Maori would have been about as healthy as Pakeha, on average, if they had the same incomes and the same rates of treatment.

"At some point people have to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves why they turn people away and turn people down or don't give people the same opportunities as they would to others of their patients or clients," Turia says.

"There are many organisations available today who are more than happy to work with the professions to do a better job."

Rob Murray, Mak Parangi and Rocky Manga are all

part of one such initiative, "Bro Files", anchored by Dr Lance O'Sullivan, who moved up from Rotorua three years ago to work at the Hauora and is one of only two Maori doctors in general practice in Northland.

O'Sullivan, 36, has ancestral roots in Kaitaia and practises what he preaches. He has run four triathlons so far this year and is training for an Ironman event at Taupo.

"For me, what he gave me was hope," says Murray.

"I hated needles and blood tests. He said to me, 'I'll do the first blood test and after that we can do this together.' And that's what we did. Now I can do it like nothing.

"Lance has tested me on a lot of new stuff. He said, 'I want you to know that this is not going to cure you but it will give you just a bit of extra quality of life.'

"I think through that, I've accepted it and I can change my lifestyle to adapt to the quality of life I have now. Now I'm eating in a more healthy manner. It's a range of things, but the wellbeing of a man's spirit plays a big part."

Out on the Karikari Peninsula, Mak Parangi is having a similar impact. Shocked by his own diabetes, which meant he was turned down for a licence to drive the school bus, he now leads his staff and 33 students on a 3.5km run at the end of each school day.

"My big girls drag their feet in the first laps," he says. "But the good thing is they saw the weight falling off and felt, 'This can't be all bad.' So off they go - and now they're leading it."

Parangi has also found ways to make maths relevant. "For example, I use whakapapa (ancestry): mama, papa, me, the same as 1, 2, 3. They always ask what their whakapapa is."

"My first proverb for them is 'there's no such thing as can't', not in this school anymore. Everybody can, there are just different levels of success," he says.

"I'm teaching my year 7 and 8 kids year 10 maths at the moment because I can. I've done the groundwork."

Turned down for the Fruit in Schools scheme because the school was ranked decile two, not one, he planted a school orchard. Two years later, Fruit in Schools has extended to decile two anyway, and Sanitarium provides healthy breakfasts.

Truancy has plummeted. "At the end of the first term I had six 100 per centers," says Parangi.

"By the end of the year I had about 20, more than half the school. If they're sick, they run away from home to come to school."

In both healthcare and education, common features of these grassroots successes are respect, collaboration and high expectations.

Even when dealing with children, O'Sullivan and Parangi place themselves on the same level as their clients instead of treating them like children who have to be told what to do.

There are similar examples elsewhere. Almost 20 years ago, Professor Walker helped initiate a "tuakana" ("older sibling") programme using Maori, and later Pacific, university students to mentor others at Auckland University and at selected South Auckland colleges. The programme has halved the Maori/Pacific failure rates at some schools.

Turia praises Waikato University professor Russell Bishop's Te Kotahitanga project, now running in 33 secondary schools, which rejects the idea that Maori students will fail because of their socio-economic backgrounds, and asks teachers to sign up to actively raising Maori students' achievement.

These programmes are often criticised because Maori are not, of course, the only people who need help - a point the Bro Files recognises.

"Maori are the underdogs, but there are others that are underdogs too," says Murray.

At Auckland University, Walker's co-director of Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, Dr Tracey McIntosh, says she has always advocated opening up the Tuakana programme to all ethnicities.

"When we do get successes, we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone who could benefit from these programmes should have access to them," she says.

Dr Evan Poata-Smith, a social scientist at AUT University, says any strategy of "closing the gaps" also has to go beyond healthcare and education.

"Can you feel good at school if you have to go home to the same environment where you are waiting for the landlord to evict you?" he asks.

He grew up in Rotorua and saw many friends join gangs.

"It's not just the glorification of American lifestyles, although you can see aspects of that. It's broadly about the lack of meaningful opportunities for kids growing up in areas where they have very little," he says. "So it's about ensuring that there is adequate income support in those communities, because a lot of this stuff starts out of deprivation and parents working two or three jobs and can't look after their kids and the kids run wild.

"I think there have to be policies, first, that focus on employment, creating meaningful opportunities for Maori. I think that's essential. And secondly, we do need a fundamental redistribution of wealth."

Redistribution is traditionally anathema to the National Party, which has always drawn its support from the "bosses". But this is an unusual National Government, supported by a party of the "underdogs" - the Maori Party.

At Kaitaia's BetaBody Gym, where the Bros work out, a big Maori Party sign dominates the top-floor windows above the main street - a political statement by gym owner Manuera Riwai, one of the Bros.

At Auckland University, McIntosh, "always a strong Labour person",

says "good things" have come out of the alliance so far, such as reviewing the foreshore and seabed law, "and

perhaps even great things can come out of it".

"It does open the possibility of real positive movements and better understanding across groups," she says.

"I think they actually have every opportunity to do it, and probably new opportunities that we have certainly not seen for a long time, if ever."

BROS WITH A GOAL

Bro Files is a grassroots response to a yawning inequity - the fact that Maori men in Northland die 14 years earlier than Pakeha men - aged 64 on average, compared with 78 for Pakeha.

Steve Allen, aged 37 and one of the Bros, says: "I find it quite atrocious that I should be faced with a life expectancy of 65 when my best mate, a Pakeha, has a life expectancy of 75 or 80. I find that somewhat unfair."

Lisa McNab, health promotion manager for the Kaitaia health service Te Hauora o Te Hiku o Te Ika, says the project sprang from a Pharmac-sponsored programme called "One Heart Many Lives", which encourages Maori men aged 35-plus to stop smoking, exercise more, eat better and use cholesterol-lowering statin medicines.

When Pharmac ran a workshop on the programme at Waitangi, the Hauora shoulder-tapped a group of men to attend. The men came up with ideas on how they could help, and chose a name.

"It's like the X Files. We're the Bro Files," says Rob Murray.

The Hauora chose 12 Maori "bros" to be role models for heart health in 2007 and another 12 last year.

The Bros have developed a "warrant of fitness" card to rate people's hearts in plain language - green for okay, orange for risky and red for dangerous.

They drew 39 men aged 32 to 82 to take part in the first Bro Files triathlon recently. Ninety men got their blood pressure checked at the project launch, and more than 200 more have had checks since then.

More importantly, says Hepa Stephens, aged 53 and another Bro, the project has helped to encourage healthier food at local marae and has given Maori men personal goals.

"I never used to have a goal," he says. "Now it does give me an incentive to exercise more, drink less, eat healthier foods - and be around for the grandchildren, that's the biggest one."