Taking rongoā Māori to the world

ACC Māori health lead Pollyanne Taare (Ngāti Porou) travelled to Canada with head of Māori health partnerships Eldon Paea (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Moriori, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) for the Healing our Spirit Worldwide confere

It was such an incredible honour for Eldon Paea and me to represent ACC, Te Rangapū Hauora Māori (the Māori Health team), our whānau and tūpuna (ancestors) in Vancouver. We were there on behalf of those people who had set the foundation three years ago to ensure rongoā Māori stood strong in ACC.

Our presentation was well received. We had a huge amount of positive feedback and many indigenous health services kaimahi and providers from around the world wanted more information on our work.

I have some great learnings from this conference. My intention was to bring knowledge back home to help grow and enhance our service from a global, indigenous perspective when, in fact, we were the ones who took this over to Vancouver.

It was great affirmation that we are on the right track with what we have achieved with our rongoā Māori service.

We know we still have work to do and a lot to learn, but we also have a lot to share.

We will always strive to evolve our rongoā Māori service to ensure we are meeting the needs of whānau, as well as our practitioners.

For me, ACC offering rongoā Māori reflects our new strategy as an organisation – Huakina Te Rā – coming to life. It shows tangata whenua (people of the land) and tangata Tiriti (people in Aotearoa by right of the Treaty) have worked together to address inequities by enabling a mātauranga Māori healing option for our kiritaki (clients).

This is something that many indigenous providers around the world are still working through with their governments and organisations.

This experience made me extremely proud to be Māori and to work for ACC. I am proud of what we’ve achieved to improve access, experience and health outcomes for our people and for all those who have healed spiritually, mentally and physically through rongoā Māori.

This experience will be hugely beneficial as we prepare to host our inaugural ACC Rongoā Māori Conference in May 2024.

Our conference will bring the rongoā community together with health clinicians and researchers to share information, knowledge, experiences and rangahau (research).

We want to ensure that rongoā remains a taonga and is given the mana and recognition that it deserves.

JEREMY BRICK, ACC Pollyanne Taare says on ACC offering rongoā Māori: “We are funding different healing options for our people. It’s about choice and options and honouring our responsibility as Te Tiriti o Waitangi partners.”