'Headstone creep' shows how Māori have suffered in the health system

Thursday, 15 July 2021

Noise and vibrations from road and rail traffic is a problem people at Aorangi Marae outside Feilding have to deal with.

A disproportionate “headstone creep” in Feilding's cemetery is a sign of how Māori have not been served properly by the health system, the Waitangi Tribunal has heard.

Members of Ngāti Kauwhata and Ngāti Parewahawaha told the tribunal at the Feilding Civic centre on Thursday about how they had been negatively affected, socially and economically, by land loss.

Their presentations come under the Manawatū ki Porirua inquiry, where the Ngāti Raukawa iwi confederation claims thousands of hectares of land between Manawatū and Kāpiti were taken from Māori.

Moahuia Goza, of Feilding-based Ngāti Kauwhata, gave an impassioned speech about how the iwi had suffered disproportionately in a “racist” health system.

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A cancer researcher, she said on average Māori died seven years earlier than non Māori, the cancer rate was 20 per cent higher and the death rate was twice as high.

It was a running joke how Palmerston North Hospital was a Ngāti Kauwhata hospital because there were so many whānau members there.

Feilding iwi Ngāti Kauwhata has suffered as a result of land loss.

Anti-racist practices needed to be implemented in the health system to improve Māori health, because Māori had consistently high levels of deprivation, she said.

“For every day there is inaction, for every day there is no redress, it becomes harder for the deprivation points to move.

“We will be one of the last iwi to settle, so we will therefore suffer prejudice.

“Even if we settled tomorrow on 100 per cent redress, we would not move the deprivation points or have any positive social move for decades.”

She asked for redress for Māori to recuperate from the effects of colonisation, from the loss of their identity and to slow the “inequitable headstone creep in Feilding Cemetery”.

Mereti Taipana said the effect of colonisation on Māori was multi-layered, as swamps and wetlands were filled, food resources destroyed, ways of life devastated and whānau fragmented by Māori migrating into urban centres.

Land loss has left an enduring mark on Ngāti Parewahawaha, which is based in Bulls.

“The whole process must have been quite traumatic on our tūpuna, our whānau, our people.”

She said Kauwhata had lost its wealth of the natural world, as farms expanded into land where Māori lived, gravel was taken from rivers and rivers were polluted.

She said a shrinking natural world affected people’s physical and mental health, and she would like to see a Māori healthcare provider in Feilding.

The Aorangi Marae, just outside Feilding on Waughs Rd, has two busy roads and a railway line outside it.

Traffic causes noise and vibration, which interrupt rituals and tangi, where the iwi have to carry their dead across the roads and railway line to their urupā.

It’s expected the rail line will get busier when a KiwiRail freight yard is built nearby.

Gael Paki said “immeasurable damage” had been done by the Native Land Court to the iwi, forcing them to move from their tūrangawaewae

“We became like the bird that sat on the rock in the middle of the ocean and when the tide came in we no longer had a place to settle.”

She said became estranged from their communal land and didn’t know what it meant to be Māori.

Ngāti Parewahawaha, which is based in Bulls, suffered similar consequences, facing challenges to build houses on its land and find jobs.

Miriama Kereama said land loss left “an enduring mark” on its people as they had lost money, opportunities and the ability to sustain themselves.

She said its people had spent so much time and resources trying to survive, they had no time to work on their aspirations.