May 22, 2013
Māori DHB directors share frustration
A Massey University PhD graduate has found problems with the way district health boards handle their Māori directors.
Joy Panoho interviewed 18 Māori DHB directors for her thesis, and all but one reported tokenism, stereotyping and political correctness were common.
They felt responsibility for advocating for Māori health was left to them alone, and found their non-Māori colleagues had enormous gaps in understanding Māori politics, Māori expertise, and Māori networks.
Dr Panoho says many reported they had to be a working treaty workshop, even when people didn’t want to hear what they had to say.
“I don’t think that there’s a willingness to look back at the historical damage of colonisation and I think that there tends to be a knee jerk reaction that says ‘that was yesterday and this is today’. But in fact, there are investitures of colonisation and health that affect Māori access to health in every possible way you can imagine. We wouldn’t have got to the statistics that we have today if it weren’t for the damage of colonisation,” she says.
Joy Panoho says district health boards need to look wider than the immediate iwi for directors, because of lot of Māori medical and governance expertise is going untapped.
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