Indigenous public order fails consistently. The research results are convincing. In post-settlement colonial societies such as New Zealand, Australia and Canada, schooling for indigenous citizens is less effective, employment and housing are not as good and health conditions are poorer.
In Canada, the government said, the solution lay in closer ties between nation and nation between state and First Nations. In Australia, the federal government is proposing a stronger consultation to "fill the gaps in indigenous discrimination".
In New Zealand, the Waitangi Treaty is generally accepted as an agreement that offers solutions to the failure of politics. It protects Māori's right to self-determination and obliges the state to ensure that public policy is as effective for Māori as it is for everyone else.
Last week, the Waitangi Tribunal reaffirmed these two general principles of health policy, but in its comprehensive report on the primary health care system, it found that despite clear intentions, the state does not achieve good results for Māori.
Lack of self-determination
In fact, the Tribunal found that the state fails because it does not set aside to enforce Māori's self-determination. Self-determination is a right that belongs to everyone. According to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which accepts New Zealand as an "aspirational" document, self-determination means the following:
Indigenous peoples have the right to define and develop priorities and strategies for the exercise of their right to development. In particular, indigenous peoples have the right to actively participate in the development and establishment of health, housing and other economic and social programs that concern them and, as far as possible, manage those programs through their own institutions.
According to the Waitangi Treaty, the right to self-determination can be expressed in at least two ways. First, the treaty affirms Māori Rangatiratanga or, in the main, the authority over her own affairs. Second, it gives Māori the "rights and privileges of British subjects".
The latter was a relatively meaningless status in 1840, when the treaty was signed by representatives of the tribes of the Crown and Maori. But in 2019, citizenship has replaced subjectivity as the content of political rights and capabilities for many New Zealanders, but not always for Māori.
Proposal for the Māori Health Authority
The tribunal's report on health services and outcomes is explicit. Māori's poor health continues to exist as health policy does not respect the treaty. The solution lies in the contractual partnership between Māori and the Crown.
The idea of a contractual partnership is firmly anchored in New Zealand politics. The tribunal report, however, reiterates the notion that this is an unequal partnership in which the crown acts as a leading party and gives place to the leadership of the Māori policy. On the other hand, at least two potentially transformative recommendations are made.
On the one hand, Crown and Māori health care applicants agree on a methodology for assessing the under-funding of Māori healthcare providers. The tribunal found that underfunding violates the contract and one of the variables that explain Māori's poor health.
Second, the Tribunal advised the Crown and the petitioners "to consider the possibility of an independent Māori Health Authority". This authority could become the primary financier of primary care for the citizens of Māori. Māori healthcare providers would submit offers of countervailable funding to the agency, which, in contrast to district health authorities, consists primarily of Māori members.
The agency would assess self-defined Māori health needs based on the established cultural values of the Māori. It could also have the capacity to commission research and contribute to the national political debate.
Māori at the center of political decisions
This is in line with a recommendation made in 2009 to the Australian Government by Kevin Rudd by a Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.
Services would be provided by the Aboriginal community-controlled health services, general health care services and hospitals, and other services. The Authority would ensure that all purchased services meet established criteria, including clinical standards, cultural adequacy, adequately trained workforce, data collection and performance reporting in relation to established objectives such as national gender equality objectives for indigenous health.
The more Reforbes the better.
The rejection of the proposal was never fully explained. But New Zealand remains instructive in enabling Māori policy to work through self-determination.
Independent Māori decisions about which health programs to fund and which providers they are from may place the people and values of the Māori at the center of the political process. This means that the Māori are not the subject of state policy. They become their representatives, exercise meaningful citizenship and have the right to take responsibility for their own affairs. The concept of Māori as junior partner of the crown is replaced by decision-making authority.
An independent funding agency could also strengthen democratic accountability to the Māori, who would not have to wait for an invitation to join the political process, but would be at the center. Liberal democracies exclude indigenous peoples and perspectives to protect majority interests. But as the tribunal has stated, the exclusion can explain why politics is failing.
In the meantime, indigenous Australians have proposed to Parliament a constitutionally anchored "vote," a truth commission, and treaties between indigenous nations and the state to recognize enduring indigenous sovereignty. Victoria and the Northern Territory have begun the process of contract negotiation, but last year a new South Australian government interrupted negotiations initiated by its predecessor. It was unbelievable that treaties could contribute to a better life for the natives.
In Zealand, the contract for Māori is not a panacea for a better life. But in 2019, as the Minister of Māori Government, Sir Apirana Ngata, put it in 1922, it remains.
[It] is much discussed on all Marae. It is on the lips of the humble and the great, the ignorant and the thoughtful.
Ultimately, the ability of the contract to transform depends on how it is interpreted, and in particular on whether self-determination can outdo the partnership.
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