Maori women's health is suffering

Tu Tangata, Issue 21, 1 December 1984, Page 26

Maori women's health is suffering

Anne Delamere is a long serving Executive member of the NZ Maori Women’s Welfare League. Recently during the League’s Annual Conference held in Whangarei, Anne was interviewed by a Radio Northland’s Darrel Weir who asked her to outline some of the points discussed during the conference.

“The main things that have been discussed at conference this week have been Health, Education and how it affects the families and the people generally but especially the women.”

Especially the women, are they seen as the ones who bear the brunt or rather the responsibility for.

“Yes, very much so especially in those two fields, in health she’s the mother but she is also under a great deal of stress. She is the manager within the home, she is the one who is concerned very much at the educational achievements of the children.”

Why should this be, does this mean that there's a shortcoming in the Maori male at sharing these responsibilities. “I think part of this is, has been the movement of the Maori family into the urban area and so the male as the breadwinner has often had to be away from home for long hours. Many Maori men work in the factories in industries where they may leave home at seven o’clock or earlier in the morning and are not back till a very late hour and so their contact with the children in particular, I think, has been limited.”

The national figures for working families are about 49 to 51 per cent that in 49 per cent of NZ families overall both partners work, have a paid employment and in 51 per cent just one person works. Is this reflected in exclusively Maori families. “I would think that this is in the case of Maori families.”

About half have both working. “Yes particularly in your urban areas.”

This would have ramification for the children then, particularly with both parents working.

‘‘Yes, I think maybe this brings in the area of stress in trying to cope with the care of the household and going out to work, for instance in some of the areas in Wellington I know of a very large percentage of women who are in the cleaning force, early morning workers, they go off cleaning offices and are back in the morning in time to prepare breakfast for the family and get the children away but then their rest period is limited because they have to be about when the children come home from school.”

So does this put more stress on the woman than the man in the family. “Yes I think so.”

And what are the results of this stress, what happens as a result of it.

“Well, people say, but I’m not quite sure, they say there is an increase in mental breakdown amongst Maori women, they say that Maori women have the highest rate of smoking and this they say is partly due to stress.”

Seventy per cent of young Maori women smoke, yes. So the health is related to the stress, the stress is related to the economic situation and the economic situation is related to the stress. It seems to go around in a circle. Can this circle be broken.

“The women can believe that this can be done, and one of the things that the women took up three or four years ago was the challenge to look at maori health but in particular women’s health, and so the Maori Women’s Welfare League has undertaken a research project looking at Maori women’s health.

There is a general concern in the area of infant health that the Maori Women’s Welfare League believes that health education can be inculcated is through the Kohanga Reo. Kohanga Reo is this language nursery that has started all over the country and they are beginning to inculcate health principles at this early age.”

For, to the children, get it into the children. “Yes, it’s all in maori with songs and action songs in maori on health.”

Educationalists have found out that half of the learning we ever do in life is done within the first five years so it’s possible and probable that young children can cope with this plus the language, but really the idea of Kohanga Reo was to inculcate the language, “language, yes”

The love of and respect for the language, first and foremost. This diversification into getting the health principles in there, is it seen by many Maori people as getting away from the idea of Kohanga Reo or do they feel it’s right on the ball.

‘‘No, they feel it’s right on the ball. Kohanga Reo exposes the child to the language, the lifestyle of Maori people

and song and dance. These are cultural aspects and so already there have been compositions for instance an action song on how to clean their teeth, dental cleanliness, on exercising the bodies done through cultural action songs but the words in fact are all about being healthy and feeling good.”

The health care system is seen by some as not being too worried about the cultural requirements of Maori health.

“Yes, I think now, there was a Health Conference recently that was sponsored by the Health Department to in fact listen to what Maori people are saying about health. Maoris found that pakehas separated the person, you know there was the physical thing and the mental. Now they felt that the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects are all parts of being human. These elements of being human are an integral part of the whole person and you can’t divide the physical wellbeing of the person from his spiritual and mental wellbeing.”

So if a person falls ill in a Maori family because of this cultural feeling that it’s to do with the spirit and the family feeling. Is there some embarrassment then about a person being ill and it’s therefore an admission that all is not well in your family, if you have to go and seek medical help?

“No, I don’t think it’s an embarrassment so much as perhaps a feeling that again there isn’t this recognition that their total wellbeing is really part of the concern of the total family.”

Well we’ll come back to the infant then. If the children are not getting the health care, is this because of the lack of education or the circumstances you described earlier, the stress caused by the employment situation which comes first.

“I think it’s the circumstances that people find themselves in today. You know people are beginning to gain confidence that they are part of the city life but if you think back to the post second war period up to the sixties this was when Maori people were coming into the cities mainly to find employment because the farms’ existing lifestyle at home was not catering for their needs. They moved to the city and I think this is something that happens all over the world. And so there’s been this period of getting established and then becoming part of these city communities and one of the things I think that reflects a greater confidence now in city living has been the establishment of marae throughout NZ in the urban areas. People used to say to me, this is a form of separatism but I didn't see it in that way and I don’t think Maori people see it in that way. They see it as a contribution, they now feel part of the community there and a contribution to the lifestyle of that area so a marae is for people.”