The most important, or certainly most used, model of Māori health is Te Whare Tapa Whā, which was developed by Sir Mason Durie in the 1980s (see here). The model says that Māori health is underpinned by four pillars: taha wairua (spiritual health), taha hinengaro (mental or emotional health), taha tinana (physical health) and te taha whānau (family health). Durie outlined that a key component of taha wairua is Māori connections with the land, and that alienation from land would lead to worse health across all four pillars.
So, I was interested to read this new article by Rowan Thom and Arthur Grimes (both Victoria University of Wellington), published in the journal Social Science and Medicine (open access). Thom and Grimes look at the impact on wellbeing (variously measured) in more modern times of land confiscations as a result of the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the Suppression of Rebellion Act 1863, during the New Zealand Wars - these confiscations are referred to by Māori as the Raupatu. They also look at the impact of land alienation more broadly (not limited to confiscations). The theory is that, if they can identify a statistical relationship between land alienation or land confiscation and modern Māori health, then that would provide evidence of a long-lasting intergenerational trauma affecting Māori.
Thom and Grimes start with a database of Māori land from 1840 (assuming all land at the time of signing of the Treaty of Waitangi was Māori-owned), 1864, 1880, 1890, 1910, 1939, and 2017. They then compute the proportion of land loss for each iwi (or iwi grouping) in the North Island for each year as one measure. By 2017:
Three-quarters of these iwi groupings today hold less than 12.5% of their rohe [region] as Māori land, and a quarter hold less than 2.7%.
Thom and Grimes then look at the relationship between the proportion of land retained by Māori for each year, and several measures of health and wellbeing, including: (1) the proportion of each iwi that can speak te reo Māori well or very well; (2) the proportion who report that it is hard or very hard to get support with Māori cultural practices; (3) the proportion who report that involvement in Māori culture is very important or quite important; (4) the proportion who had visited their ancestral marae in last year; and (5) smoking prevalence. These data were drawn from the 2018 wave of Te Kupenga - the Māori social survey run by Statistics New Zealand, which had a sample size of 5548. They also look at the impact of an iwi having experienced the Raupatu (as a binary variable - yes or no). They find that:
In each case, landholdings are a significant predictor of current cultural wellbeing outcomes, and it is landholdings around the end of the nineteenth century (1890 or 1910) that have the greatest explanatory power. Iwi that retained a greater proportion of their land at that time now have higher rates of te reo proficiency, place greater importance on involvement in Māori culture and are more likely to have visited an ancestral marae over the previous year; they are less likely to find it hard getting support with Māori cultural practices. Thus, greater retention of land has – over a century later – assisted those iwi in the retention of their cultural roots.
In 1910, the lower and upper quartiles of landholdings for our estimation sample (covering North Island iwi groupings) were 6.0% and 30.7% respectively. The effect of moving from the lower to the upper quartile of land retention in 1910 is estimated to be an extra 1.6 percentage points (p.p.) of that iwi grouping being able to speak te reo proficiently (well/very well) today. The same change in landholdings is estimated to have led to an increase in the current proportion of iwi members who find it important to be involved in Māori culture of 1.8 p.p., and an increase in the proportion who have visited a marae of 2.8 p.p.; the proportion who finds it difficult to find support for Māori cultural practices is estimated to decline by 0.6 p. p.
Land retention is estimated to have had no significant effect on smoking rates across iwi, but experience of confiscation does. An iwi that was subject to land confiscation during the Raupatu is estimated to have a smoking rate that is 2.6 p. p. higher than in an iwi for whom confiscation did not occur.
So overall, the proportion of land retained (as opposed to the proportion alienated) was associated with better cultural outcomes. However, there was no additional effect of their iwi having experienced land confiscation (Raupatu). For smoking, the opposite was the case - land confiscation was associated with higher smoking prevalence, but the proportion of land retained was not. In all cases, the point estimates were pretty consistent across measures at different points in time, although the level of statistical significance was not. I would have been interested to see to what extent statistical significance survived an adjustment for multiple hypothesis testing.
That minor gripe about multiple testing aside, this research is potentially important. However, it did disappoint me a little, as the direct correlation between land alienation and health will now prevent me from using land alienation as an instrument for Māori social capital in another research project, as I had intended.
Thom and Grimes conclude that:
The research indicates the importance of reconnecting people with their whenua and rohe, and the central role that they have in improving the wellbeing outcomes of iwi. The process of individuals reconnecting with their rohe is a form of active healing, in which they are strengthening and expressing culture, rebuilding relationships and addressing trauma and grief...
That raises an interesting possibility for follow-up research. To what extent has the return of land through the Treaty settlement process contributed to improved Māori health and wellbeing? I wonder if anyone has considered that idea?
[HT: Matt Roskruge]
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