Doctor Ihi Heke is a Māori health expert that doesn’t pull his punches. He’ll tell you if you’re using up air the rest of us could use. And he won’t blink an eyelid. Should we be offended, or listen up to the terribly honest professor trying to help Maōri change their lives for the better?
Last year Native Affairs met the unforgettable Dr Ihirangi Heke. He has very strong views about what Māori need to do to fix their poor health problems. You might not like everything he has to say, but the hard working academic has got the credentials to back up his kōrero.
Dr Heke has a confrontational way of motivating Māori to be the best they can be. Asked if he thought it’s a privilege to be Māori today, he cut straight to the chase.
“Absolutely, we're the master race of the planet because we survived the most brutal ocean on the planet. We travelled all around the Pacific at will. If we can handle here we have to be the best. But if you’re rolling through with the best, show me,” says Dr Heke.
The unorthodox professor says the focus needs to be on the individual first, not the whānau.
“Ministry of Health say it’s all about whānau, I think that's a load of crap actually. What it should be about is about mātauranga, about whakapapa, and if we follow all of those things down that individual, that whānau, will get health as an incidental outcome of understanding why they exist,” says Dr Heke.
He says the solution to poor Māori health statistics isn't to be found in a gym.
“To go to a concrete room and lift disks of steel to pursue health, if we were to ask some of our tūpuna if that's a good idea what do you think their response would be?,” says Dr Heke.
His approach to health is to use traditional Māori practices in a modern context. He's developed a health programme based on his theory called the ‘Atua Māori Framework’.
“The way we practised the pursuit of oranga was by understanding which atua, kaitiaki or tipua represented a particular taiao and we went there. We learnt the personality traits and the characteristics of that atua, and hello we get health, physical activity, oranga as incidental outcomes of the pursuit of mātauranga Māori,” says the health academic.
Dr Heke has converted hundreds to his mātauranga Māori for health. And he’s hoping more will hear his message.
“If you've managed to get here from Tahiti, if you have managed to deal with tribal warfare, if you managed to deal with introduced disease, if you've managed to deal with institutionalised racism you're literally the best we are going to have because you've been through the ringer. Mean that you got all this whakapapa, mean that you're the best, but prove it. Go out there and show me what you're capable of. Otherwise, get off your using air the rest of us can use.”