By AUDREY YOUNG
Inserting the term "mana whenua" into health reform law will provide a new stage for Maori sovereignty advocates, warns Muriwhenua leader Shane Jones.
And it could create as much work for lawyers as the litigation associated with the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, says Mr Jones, who is a member of the commission.
"What a horrifying thought after having come out of the imbroglio of the last 10 years of health restructuring. We're now going to burden the new health system with the rather vexatious task of resolving the constitutional tribes in Aotearoa.
"I'd hate to be a pregnant mother needing urgent attention if that's what you've got to go through before you get medical care."
Mr Jones is disturbed that the customary concept on "mana whenua" is being taken and used out of context.
"They seem to be used by the people who promote the ideology of de-colonisation. It's a massive diversion away from the real task at hand."
"It actually quite a cunning ploy in the sense that once you put these words into law, you build up a platform or a theatre upon which you start a new dynamic.
"The dynamic that will be unleashed is really a continuation of the Maori sovereignty debate."
The term is contained in the Public Health and Disability Bill introduced to Parliament this week. It provides that as well as having a minimum of two Maori on each of the new 21 health boards, each board must establish and maintain "partnership relationships" with mana whenua in the board's geographical area. "Mana whenua" is defined as being "the people whose customary authority over their tribal area is derived from their tupuna whakapapa."
A row has already erupted between Labour MPs Tariana Turia and John Tamihere over whether local iwi should have exclusive rights of partnership with health boards over contemporary groups, such as urban Maori authorities and the Maori Women's Welfare League.
With the broad wording of the bill, Mr Jones fears costly legal rows among iwi as well as to which iwi, hapu or whanau exercises mana whenua in an area and what say they should have in dispersal of the health dollar.
He anticipates difficulties in Northland.
"If I follow the fisheries commission model there will probably be 12 and up to 15 tribal groups of Maori who will expect to be regarded as the customary mana whenua group.
"Once you put things in law, you set up a recipe for on-going wrangling," he says.
"Just as High Court judges are bewildered as to what to do with tikanga Maori in relation to the fisheries, they are about to be served up a new version of that same debate. That is my fear."
In the late 1800s "mana whenua" was an expression to define areas where Maori hoped to exercise jurisdiction and govern themselves.
The fisheries commission has used the term to denote tribal lands and seas: mana whenua, mana moana.
"It has been elevated in more recent times to mean passive jurisdiction, exclusive power.
"By inserting a term like 'mana whenua' into public welfare legislation, my deep fear is that we are handing over a customary concept with limited relevance in the modern function of society, handing over the definition, the meaning, the relevance of that customary concept to the High Court and to the legions of lawyers who currently feast at the trough of the fisheries settlement."
"Once this term falls into the hands of wrangling tribal runanga and their lawyers, the debate will have nothing to do with children who aren't being presented to doctors until they are half-dead, and real health needs."
Herald Online Health
Maori sovereignty debate may cloud health reform
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