Internal Barriers to Māori Progress

I have long held the view that the real barriers to Māori progress today lie within ourselves. I recognise that there are very real and significant external barriers preventing Māori people from achieving our goals. The recent Māori health inquiry before the Waitangi Tribunal is the latest example of a project providing significant evidence of these external barriers, this time in New Zealand's health system. The current Royal Commission concerning Abuse in Care is another venue where external barriers working against Māori health and wellbeing is being discussed and analysed.

I do not wish to suggest that there are no external barriers to Māori development for indeed there are. However, I do wish to highlight the barriers that we Māori create for ourselves, the barriers that exist within ourselves. Second, I wish to say that it is these internal barriers that represent the most significant ways by which Māori aspirations are denied, Māori hopes are dashed, Māori plans are thwarted. Finally, I wish to add that external barriers can be overcome when there is an internal resilience, strength, unity and love.

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Some years ago, my granduncle, Toi Marsden of Ōmāpere, Hokianga, told me that 'te iwi Māori' has long been afflicted by three great mate or sicknesses and it these sicknesses that have continually worked against us, preventing us from realising our potential. He said that 'te iwi Māori' was once in possession of a ‘great mana’, one that saw our people successfully cross the vast Te Moananui-a-Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) and arrive in Aotearoa, here to create significant tribal peoples and societies throughout the country. He added, however, that in time this great mana became corrupted and weakened through 'ngā whakawaitanga o te wairua' (the temptations and weaknesses of the spirit) and the unity of peoples waned significantly leading to conflict and dissension. This ‘great mana’ diminished over time. The three mate, he explained, were:

• Ngau Tuarā - gossip
• Pūhaehae - jealousy
• Apo - greed

Ngau Tuarā is popularly translated as 'gossip', however, it literally translates as 'to bite the spine or backbone'. In Māori symbolism, the backbone or spine represents the group of people who support an individual. They are his/her tuarā. Gossip is designed to weaken this 'tuarā' by disparaging the individual concerned in an underhanded, secretive way. Ngau Tuarā is not conducted openly, before the individual concerned, Rather, it is done 'behind their back', hidden and deliberately so. The outcome of ngau tuarā is to isolate a person, to disconnect them from their people by saying disparaging things about them. This is why ngau tuarā is so destructive. 

There is a phrase in a waiata by Rangi Topeora of Ngāti Toa for my ancestor, Te Ahukaramū of Ngāti Raukawa which says:

Ko tā te ngutuhanga, he kai mahora noa.

What comes of gossip is an indiscriminate, destructive consumption.

Pūhaehae is popularly translated as jealousy and envy, a spiritual and emotional problem within humankind that all the great wisdom traditions of the world recognise and seek ways to address. It comes from the competitive side of the human person, the side that recognises that we live our lives in relationship with others and we are constantly sensitive to how we are perceived by others. Pūhaehae literally means to cut or sever and so we see the Māori perspective on jealousy - it cuts and severs relationships and life itself.

It was pūhaehae that caused Mataora to strike his wife Niwareka believing her to have been with another man.  It was pūhaehae that lead Whiri-te-tupua to ascend to the heavens via the ‘edge of the sky’, stung that it was his younger brother Tānenuiārangi, and not himself, who was nominated by their family to meet Io, the supreme being.

Finally, apo is greed. It comes from that part of us that mistakenly believes that by the possession of external things - objects, money, power, influence - we will feel happy, empowered, fulfilled. It is natural to desire that our external circumstances reflect back to us some control over our life - that our external world reflects our internal experience. We all desire this sense of being at one with the world around us. However, apo takes this to an excessive degree by seeking to dominate the world around us. There is a particular kind of greed that is particularly destructive and that is the greed for power and control. Apo wishes to dominate the world around it, to control it, to bend it to its will. This desire even lust for control arises from a deep lacking or void within us which we feel can only be filled by acquiring external things.

(c) Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal 2020

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How to cite this blogpost: 'Internal Barriers to Māori Progress', a blogpost by Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, published to the Aro-Mind blog. 31 January 2020.