Tariana Turia: Whanau the key to better Maori future

COMMENT

I'm all for a national debate on how to increase the contribution that tangata whenua make to this country. If that is what Richard Prebble and the Act Party want, I agree.

To prop up their arguments against "race-based policies", though, they have published some remarkable figures. They say that for every $2 Maori pay in tax, Maori receive $7 in benefits.

We are told Act's figures include spending on law and order. Does Act consider that Government spending to prosecute and imprison our people is a benefit to Maori?

More importantly, does "Maori" mean the Maori race? Or is Act talking about a generic individual who has Maori, English, Scottish, Pacific Island and goodness knows what other ancestry and for whom Maori is a convenient label? Have Mr Prebble's calculations been adjusted for blood quantum?

Act's figures are simply nonsense because "race" is a simplistic term. Race has no place in the Government's policy-making.

The heart of Act's argument is that the Government should treat people as individuals and not as members of some collective sector interest group. The race that Act supports is the rat race. Good luck to them and may the best rat win.

Tangata whenua are quite clear who we are. We are communities of people. We have kinship ties and responsibilities to each other, to our ancestors and to the gods and the natural elements, who make our world what it is.

We value our shared history and traditions, tikanga, language and culture and the property we hold in common. All these taonga bind our whanau into effective communities. We are not going to abandon all that to suit Mr Prebble.

When we agreed to share the natural resources of our islands with British settlers, the Crown guaranteed to protect our communities. The question that needs debate is how we provide that protection today to maximise the contribution that tangata whenua can make to the nation.

Act's rat race is heading in the wrong direction. But neither is it right for the state to take over the role of whanau and tribal organisations in looking after our own affairs.

Despite the best of intentions, past government policies have seriously damaged the fabric of whanau relationships, undermined our peoples' sense of collective identity and security and compromised our ability to manage our own affairs in the best interests of all our members.

They have also triggered a loss of language and culture, including the core values that have kept our whanau together in times of adversity.

In a well-known song of the 1930s, the great Ngati Porou composer Tuini Ngawai wrote:

Te matauranga o te Pakeha,

Ka tuari i te penihana oranga.

Hei aha ra?

Hei patu mahara, patu tikanga Maori e.

(The knowledge of the Pakeha

Provides welfare benefits.

For what purpose?

To attack Maori thinking and values.)

Tuini saw individual entitlement to a guaranteed income as a threat to the collective security offered by the kin-group and a further step towards the individualisation of our people that had been started by the Native Land Court the previous century.

Time has shown that Tuini was right. More and more of our people have come to rely on the state instead of the whanau when things go wrong. We need new approaches to promote the development of tangata whenua.

Last year I organised a series of a dozen hui around the country to discuss whanau development with people at the flax roots.

We heard that many whanau are in a bad way. As whanau support networks and social control mechanisms have broken down, alienation, poverty and violence have taken hold. For many whanau, healing and restoration are the top priority before they can begin to take control of their future.

The hui also showed up the nonsense of the idea that our people like being on the dole. Half a million of our people are independent, and those who are on the benefit aspire to independence by addressing the critical issues facing whanau. I met many whanau who have made extraordinary efforts to support each other.

In one case, six families - including grandparents, parents, uncles and aunties - combined to home-school their children. They felt the local school was not protecting the children's identity as tangata whenua. The adults saw home-schooling as an investment, not of money or material things, but of time and care and love in their children's future.

The children were doing outstandingly well, and there were huge benefits for whanau relationships. In the end, there will be an economic return because bright, secure children will be able to take up rewarding opportunities as adults.

Another whanau got together to address physical, sexual and psychological abuse in their midst. By having a strategy, they stamped it out. But there was more than that: the women were then able to go on to tertiary education. One now has a bachelor of education degree, one is a trained pharmacist and the other is studying early childhood education.

As each of these women started studying, the whanau gathered around them to support. They saw their strength within their own tikanga. They didn't need to go outside our culture for models of empowerment.

What whanau want, in order to contribute better to the nation, is for outside agencies to work with them, to support the whanau to achieve their own goals, instead of pushing the agency's own ideas on what is good for whanau.

This is happening. He Korowai Oranga, the Government's Maori health strategy, calls for health workers to recognise and deal with individual patients as members of their whanau. Whanau groups are best able to deal with many critical health issues, including so-called lifestyle diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, smoking and obesity. So doctors are encouraged to include the whanau in consultations.

For example, it is hard to change your diet if someone else does the cooking. But if the whole whanau is involved in taking responsibility for each other's health, together they can support each other to make the necessary lifestyle changes. This not only helps the original patient but improves the health and quality of life of all whanau members and may prevent further cases of disease. Once the whanau are doing it for themselves, the doctor can offer information, guidance, support and encouragement.

Similar approaches are being developed to address family violence, child care and protection, training and employment, and even housing.

This is not race-based policy. Anyone can try it - in fact, most Maori health providers have significant numbers of non-Maori patients, people of all cultures who prefer family-based services that emphasise prevention.

The Government is working on a development strategy to provide a framework for official agencies to work effectively with whanau. It will take its lead from the findings of the hui.

Whanau development may take time but I am really excited because this approach can unlock our people's potential to contribute, and I look forward to all New Zealanders taking a constructive interest in our progress.