5 minute read
GEARING UP
MATT SHAND, JOURNALIST
ASMS’ kaumātua and kuia, Te Pona Martin and Marama Rewiti-Martin, talk about their hopes for their new roles.
After 22 years driving trucks in Australia, ASMS kaumātua Te Pona Martin switched gears to improve equity and tikanga me ona te reo Māori (Māori cultural practices and language) in the health sector.
Te Pona, and his wife Marama Rewiti-Martin, accepted the position of cultural leaders, navigators and mentors for ASMS, to help the organisation further develop our cultural competency.
As kaumātua and kuia, their role is to provide guidance to the National Executive, Te Mauri Taurite and the Executive Director, support the association to connect with mana whenua, and help incorporate mātauranga, tikanga and te reo Māori into ASMS’ activities.
Te Pona is also employed by Te Whatu Ora in the Bay of Plenty region as Te Pou Kōkiri, an advocacy services liaison for patients and whānau.
The role is part of a range of hospital and community-based services available at Tauranga Hospital, performed by clinical and non-clinical staff who have strong knowledge in te reo and tikanga Māori.
“Our people come to the hospital and tell me, ‘This is the end of my journey’,” Te Pona says.
“I ask them why and they tell me, ‘Well, this is where our people come to die’.
“I tell them no. This is where you come to get fixed.”
Te Pona ensures a patient’s treatment is grounded in equity and helps all aspects of the health system to work together to ensure people are not lost in the bureaucracy or cultural misunderstanding.
“We get people from the outback places of New Zealand,” he says.
“They have often come from a rural medical centre and are in an unfamiliar place. That is an environment where things can go wrong culturally.
“I walk around with a book which has a working definition of the expectation of cultural safety and speak to medical staff about this often.
“Even if they do not practise it, I will. That can make the difference to someone.”
Te Pona sees the role of kaumātua as an opportunity to expand health equity across a wider area.
“I wanted to see how you fellas operated,” he says.
“And how clinicians view equity throughout the whole of Aotearoa. There is a lot of work to go, but through projecting the principles of Te Tiriti, we can improve health for all.”
Te Pona is joined by his wife Marama in the kuia role.
Marama works as an associate director in the Institute of Professional Learning at the University of Waikato where she focuses on professional development for teachers working in Māori sectors.
“We’re currently working to address the shortage of Māori teachers and help with the nationwide teacher shortage,” she says.
“We have been supporting children coming through kohanga reo, primary school and, now, starting to see young people come out the other end and enter the teaching profession.
“We are seeing more language-confident children giving back to other students.”
Marama says the issues within the teaching sector have parallels to the health sector, particularly in the equity space.
“It’s been an uphill battle to have the Māori perspective recognised and be better informed than we have about Te Tiriti partnership,” she says.
“We are asking questions like what partnership truly means in Aotearoa, and this has seen it move forward in some areas.
“In health this is vitally important because health statistics for Māori are not flash, and having ASMS members understand what that means and provide quality service to address those issues is critically important.”
Small steps are required to start. Both Te Pona and Marama want to reach out to ASMS’ Māori membership and become more engaged with Māori members.
“At this stage we still do not know how many Māori members there are and what their key issues are, so it is still very much in the factfinding stage,” Marama says.
“We want to embed any learnings we find, to allow us to provide cultural support as needed.
“At the moment we have interacted at the National Executive level, and I want to meet more doctors and have conversations with them to get a clearer picture of what their jobs in the hospital system entail and how we can offer support.
“Also, we can learn what expectations they have of their kuia and kaumātua. We can act as the bridge between management and governance for the people we serve. Not just Māori but across the spectrum of the membership to provide better understanding and communication.”
For further information about Te Mauri Taurite email temauritaurite@asms.org.nz
ASMS Toi Mata Hauora has been working to improve its member data, including ethnicity data – but we can only go off what we currently have. Members can register any ethnicity, including signalling they whakapapa Māori, by updating their details at asms.org.nz/member-details-update/
