ACC claims for rongoa Māori traditional healing soar

The number of people accessing traditional Māori health treatments has soared in recent years as ACC works to “address inequalities”.

In 2020, 472 people made claims for rongoā – traditional Māori healing – through the
Accident Compensation Corporation. This grew to 6103 in 2023 – an increase of more than 1000 per cent.

Head of Māori health partnerships Eldon Paea said the demand has been from about as many Māori and non-Māori.

“Fifty-nine per cent of kiritaki [clients] accessing rongoā Māori are Māori; 41 per cent are non-Māori.”

Paea referred to Māori health challenges such as distrust toward the mainstream health system but said he felt the growth in rongoā demand was helping to address this.

In 2023, Waikato was the largest source of rongoā claims (2074), followed by Bay of Plenty (588), Gisborne (532) and Auckland (516).

In May, more than 450 rongoā practitioners and health service providers packed into Rotorua’s Energy Event Centre for the sold-out inaugural ACC Rongoā Māori Conference. The aim during the two-day meeting was to grow understanding of traditional Māori healing and its place in Aotearoa’s health sector.

For the ACC Māori Department, much of the work leading up to the conference was about establishing the new direction for rongoā Māori into mainstream services. In 2019, the department launched the ‘Kia Mahea Kia Puawai – Making It Clear So We Can Flourish’ campaign.

The by-Māori, for-Māori strategy was created to share useful knowledge about the resources and better support access to services for injured whānau.

Other challenges considered included how rongoā services should be charged given these have traditionally been paid for using a koha [donation] system.

Paea said his role focused on co-ordinating people from rongoā communities across New Zealand. This included Te Kāhui Rongoā Trust, a cohort of trustees representing individual rohe or tribes across New Zealand. There was no national governing body for rongoā.

Paea’s role focuses on speaking a corporate language for practitioners and tohunga [experts]. He said his work in the ACC Māori team was weighted by a promise he made his grandmother when he was in intermediate – to learn te ao Pakeha – the Pakeha world.

He said she told him: “There will come a time when you’ll need to help our people and we need someone like that to help navigate between the two worlds.”

Now a father of four, Paea said it was a shame that when he was in school, he was taught to only trust the mainstream health system.

“My grandmother would give us types of rongoā we didn’t understand, we didn’t have the education,” Paea said.

“It’s kind of an awakening to realise that … traditional Māori healing does have a place.”

Paea said it was concerning that Māori were less likely to access ACC services but more likely to sustain complex injuries.

“When we look at why they’re not accessing the services, they give us reasons like lack of trust, poor previous experiences, a lack of access to care, and having a lack of culturally aligned services.”

Aligning rehabilitation services for Māori, by Māori

ACC aimed to achieve equitable access to services and improved outcomes for all New Zealanders, Paea said.

Paea said in addition to treatment for sport or work-related injuries, rehabilitation services included support, advice, or counselling.

Mental trauma was “probably the second most popular injury” rongoā treated.

“Interestingly, 29 per cent of all our services are for sensitive-claim clients, and they are your survivors of sexual violence,” said Paea.

He was proud of the progress made so far.

“We have set the stage for increased trust and meaningful change with Māori, and we have more work to do,” he said.

This included continuing to “invest to address inequalities for Māori”.

A spokesperson for Te Pāti Māori co-leader and Waiariki MP Rawiri Waititi, who was on bereavement leave, said the boom in rongoā clients showed “when by-Māori-for-Māori practices are adopted, that services foster better relationships and deliver better outcomes for us”.

’Their body feels different’

Rongoa practitioner Tania Wall specialises in romiromi (pressure-point stimulation and deep-tissue massage) and mirimiri (a vibrational exchange).

Wall set her practice up with ACC clients in 2023 and it has been “massive”, she said.

“Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to afford the journey that we go on together for their wellbeing.”

She said rongoā Māori healing was new to some clients but they were not disappointed after trying it.

“[They say] I can’t get over the stuff that’s lifting and changing coming to see you.

“Even their body feels different. They get off the table and say, ‘Oh my gosh I feel so much lighter.”

Holistic alternatives to mainstream problems

Wai-Sharne Raynes is a Te Kāhui Rongoā Trust trustee for Auckland. She specialises in brewing kūmarahou, a shrub endemic to the North Island.

“We gave this to all our oldies during Covid,” she said.

“Kūmarahou is a detoxifier, it cleanses out all your respiratory system. The lungs, your kidneys, and it really gets in your blood circulation.”

With 10 years of experience, Raynes said adding tanekaha bark, another plant endemic to New Zealand, into her “sangria” mix made it “an antibiotic as well”.

Rayes said her dream was to have rongoā dispensaries “everywhere” and saw potential for the trust to lead an initiative on this.

Aleyna Martinez is a multimedia journalist based in the Bay of Plenty.