Activism

Changes that effect the health of Māori are not always driven from the top.

In fact, you could argue that improvements in the entire area of health are often due to grass roots activism.

Maori activism is a mechanism used to drive the improvement in Māori social and economic status.

Māori political activism has developed from a failure to see progress in the areas of land grievances, language and overall health status.

These essentially have been from the determination of Māori people to maintain their intrinsic cultural beliefs.

In the changing pattern of ill health for indigenous people European colonisation of the Pacific and the Americas after 1492 saw indigenous populations decimated by imported communicable diseases.

In the Pacific indigenous people experienced high mortality from imported infectious disease mainly when their land was taken and their economic base, food supply and social networks were disrupted.

Māori insist on political and economic justice through tino rangatiratanga  or transposed as Maori independence.

This section is taken largely from this research report.

Next: Women's health activism