Where all the young, gifted and Maori go

By TIM WATKIN

Doctor Raumati Hook fell in love with chemistry as a boy through reading comics. Eagle was his favourite, and it had rockets. "I set out to build my own rockets, but rather than take off they just exploded. I made a giant crater in Mum's vege garden. So I had to go to the library to learn what was happening, and I learned chemistry and maths."

When he tried to make elderberry wine, his clothes and his mother's pots and pans went the way of the veges. But his curiosity was never shackled. His elders and teachers, one in particular, encouraged his experiments.

It was these things, he says, that poked and prodded him towards his PhD, becoming a doctor of science in biochemistry; these things that saw him running a lung-disease research lab at the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina and becoming the editor-in-chief of Environmental Health Perspectives, the world's pre-eminent environmental health magazine.

It had nothing to do with his temperament, he sighs, nor his ethnicity. Nothing to do with the reasons attributed to Martin Crowe on the Wisden website as to why so few Maori have been successful cricketers.

Let's be clear: racial characteristics, and the DNA that goes with race, might give an individual physical abilities greater or lesser than someone of another race, though there is still much debate about why and how influential that is. They do not, however, define a person's talents or interests. Or their "temperament".

Ella Henry, head of Pukenga, the school of Maori education at Unitec, chuckles at any suggestion that Maori don't have the patience for five-day tests. Talking on her mobile phone while returning from a tangi, she says, "I've just spent three days sitting out patiently in the blistering sun. When it's culturally important, we're patient all right."

Ah yes, culture. While there's still a need to be wary of generalisations because individuals can break through any kind of stereotype, social and cultural influences do have a great bearing on an individual's choices.

Crowe has disowned his reported comments, but they do raise important social and cultural questions that reach far beyond cricket: why have Maori tended to enter certain professional, academic and, yes, certain sporting fields and not others? What are the limiting factors?

If there are fewer Maori than you might expect in cricket, they have also been noticeable by their absence in fields such as science and technology, in business and in certain professions.

Educators and Maori achievers agree success breeds success and childhood experiences are pivotal to broadening horizons.

"It goes back to the education system," says Dr Margaret Mutu, head of Maori Studies at Auckland University. Maori are still plagued by low expectations and a system often foreign to their families.

Almost all the Maori achieving in non-traditional areas spoken to by the Weekend Herald recalled some prejudice or discouragement at the hands of teachers.

"From my own past," Hook recalls, "I remember being at Victoria University where I was told by a professor that I should go out and get a job. I said, 'No way!'

"The absence of Maori from science is down to sentiments similar to those expressed by Crowe. I've heard tell that there was active discouragement of Maori scientists, by people in high schools especially."

Alan Groves, the investment manager for Maori innovation at the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FoRST), says young Maori are encouraged away from business in much the same way. He works alongside the Enterprise New Zealand Trust, which runs economic literacy programmes in schools. "They can't get the low-decile schools to participate because they say it's not the type of thing that our Polynesian and Maori kids are into."

Mike Walker, associate professor of biological sciences at Auckland University and joint director of Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga, its Maori centre of research excellence, says while there is much more encouragement for young Maori today, such institutional racism still exists and has been internalised by several generations of Maori who now don't think themselves capable of anything better.

"Both in the teachers and among Maori you see two attitudes - one is, we're just dumb. The other is, education is not for us because the environment is hostile to us."

Walker runs a mentoring programme for Maori pupils at Tangaroa College called Tuakana (elder siblings), which sends university students back into the classroom to act as role-models and brings pupils on trips to the university.

"It's not until they get shoulder-tapped and spend time with these students who they thought must be so much brighter than they are, that they realise, 'Hey, I can do this'."

Teaching teachers to broaden their pupils' horizons is critical, says Mike Leach, principal of Tangaroa College.

"Expectations for children are so often self-fulfilling. I tell my teachers, whatever you think of the kids sitting in front of you tends to come true."

Alongside education, money has always been able to open doors. With most Maori counted the working class or rural poor throughout the 20th century, their options have been limited.



Head1: and Maori go

Caption1: IT'S NOT CRICKET: Ella Henry, head of Pukenga, the school of Maori education at Unitec, chuckles at suggestions that Maori don't have the patience for five-day tests. They'll sit through a lengthy tangi, she says.

"Personally, I think it's largely an economic thing," says Hook. "If you look at the US as a model, there was a time when there were very few blacks playing basketball. Look at basketball today.

"I think the change is driven by economics. In that time the general economic level of the black population has improved considerably, as has the education level."

Henry adds, "with growing numbers of middle-class Maori, they will be more likely to play middle-class sports and do middle-class jobs."

She believes choices for Maori have long been limited by the New Zealand Wars and land confiscations in the mid to late-19th century. Before then, when Maori were first exposed to the European world, they quickly developed a manufacturing and trading sector. Hongi Hika, for example, traded with Australia and California, and it's believed he was looking to expand into Asia before the wars overtook him. With the focus on retaining their land and culture, Maori wealth was lost.

"We lost our economic base and have had to regain skills and resources. History still shapes us."

Peter Witehira, the founder and managing director of computer and telecommunications firm Power Beat International, says the emphasis placed on regaining lost skills and resources has incurred a cost of its own.

One of the few Maori prominent in IT, Witehira says while traditional language and crafts have been revived, "there's a price to pay for that. You have to give up some of your young people who would otherwise take a modern approach to the way they live".

He's concerned Maori have spent too long addressing the past instead of preparing for the hi-tech future. The priority on marae has been for carvers rather than chemists. "There's a certain amount of pressure to toe the cultural line and it inhibits the average teenage Maori who stands up and wants to be a physicist."

Certainly, Maori, in the form of kaumatua and prominent families, have long targeted particular professions and sectors for their children. It's not just external forces that have limited Maori choices. In the 1950s, the most able Maori were often encouraged into teaching as a way of improving education standards. As that bore fruit and more Maori started entering universities in the 1970s, law became a priority.

"We were getting done in the courts and desperately trying to stitch together treaty claims, so pro-active families and tribes encouraged their young and bright into those areas".

In the 1990s, the focus switched again, this time to commerce degrees as Maori have regained some of their economic strength.

"Part of that has to do with the recognition that business skills are important. Treaty settlements and Maori trust boards have been central in encouraging that," says Maori surgeon Jonathan Koea.

Cultural values have meant many Maori have shied away from business, says investment manager Groves.

Maori who have gone into business tend to have different priorities than just year-on-year profit.

They are often expected to promote their whanau, take a long-term view, ensuring prosperity for future generations, and avoid environmental damage.

From his experience on Maori trust boards, Groves says "there is therefore a risk aversion amongst Maori businesses". The financial circumstances of many Maori also discourages risk-taking, as getting a steady income becomes a priority.

Maori tend to emphasise the needs of the family and community ahead of individual success, says Koea. In medicine, most Maori become GPs or go into public health. "They often look for things that they can take back to their communities. It's inevitable that being from a minority, they will tend to focus on areas of most use and congregate together."

Henry agrees Maori prefer to stick together. "We don't like to go into the unknown unless we have our mates with us," she says.

Those who break into new areas find it hard. Mutu was one who, as a young Maori woman, broke the mould and did a science degree. "I was hugely determined, but I was very, very lonely and being lonely for Maori is a killer."

Yet that's the way it's always been for Maori, says Henry. "A canoe would leave, discover, then go back and call the people on."

As Maori families and communities have now started to regain their cultural and economic feet, such limitations may be beginning to fall away. Maori communities are less prescriptive in what they want their "young and bright" to do.

Adam Parore, Heath Davis and Daryl Tuffey have played cricket for New Zealand. Hook, Walker and others have made it to the top in science and are now working to broaden its appeal among their people. Successful professionals such as Koea and Witehira are making a mark in non-traditional areas. The canoes are heading further afield.