The bit in quotes in the title may be a bit mean, but it’s the title an anonymous reader gave in an email linking to several articles from a New Zealand site (here, here, and here). The articles describe a new set of standards for registered nurses in the country, standards that I read in the official government document (see below).
Why this seems “asylum-ish” is because the standards are almost entirely directed to prioritizing and catering to the indigenous Māori population of the country, even though they are in a minority of the population (16.5%) compared to Europeans (70%) but also very close in numbers to Asians (15.3%, with most of the remainder being Pacific Islanders). The standards direct New Zealand nurses to become “culturally competent”, which is okay if it means being sensitive to differences in psychology of different groups, but is not okay if it means medically treating those groups in different ways, or having to become politicized by absorbing the Treaty of Waitangi or learning about intersectionality. And that is in fact the case with the new standards, which also prompt NZ nurses to engage in untested herbal and spiritual healing, including prayers. The whole thing is bonkers, but it takes effect in January.
As one of the articles says, “critics argue that these changes prioritise ideology over practical skills.” And I suspect you’ll agree after you read the relatively short set of official standards given below. Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles in the news:
As one of the articles says, “critics argue that these changes prioritise ideology over practical skills.” And I suspect you’ll agree after you read the relatively short set of official standards given below. Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles in the news:
The updated Standards of Competence require nurses to demonstrate kawa whakaruruhau (Māori cultural safety) by addressing power imbalances in healthcare settings and working collaboratively with Māori to support equitable health outcomes.
The standards place a strong emphasis on cultural competency, including the need for nurses to establish therapeutic relationships with individuals, whānau [Māori extended families], and communities. They must also recognise the importance of whanaungatanga (building relationships) and manaakitanga (hospitality and respect) in fostering collective wellbeing.
One of the more significant additions involves requiring nurses to “describe the impact of colonisation and social determinants on health and wellbeing.” Additionally, nurses must advocate for individuals and whānau by incorporating cultural, spiritual, physical, and mental health into whakapapa-centred care (care focused on family and ancestral connections).
The new Standards of Competence have faced sharp criticism from some nurses, who argue the requirements impose ideological perspectives and unnecessarily complicate training processes.
However, none were willing to speak on the record for fear that voicing their concerns could jeopardise their employment.
The standards are unbelievable, so extreme in their catering to indigenous peoples that they seem racist against everyone else. But don’t take my word for it: simply click on the document below and look it over. It’s no wonder that many nurses are flummoxed by the new directive, which, as usual, is heavily larded with indigenous jargon that many (including Māori) don’t understand. The language is simple virtue flaunting.
The very start of the standards promotes the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (“Te Tiriti o Waitangi”)—an agreement between some (not all) Māori tribes and the British governance that established three principles. First, Māori would become British citizens with all the rights attending thereto. Second, the governance of New Zealand would remain in the hands of Britain and British settlers (“the Crown’). Finally, the Māori would be able to keep their lands and possessions and retain “chieftainship” of their lands.
Even though this agreement was never signed by all indigenous tribes on the island, it has assumed almost a sacred status in New Zealand, with a newer interpretation that goes something like this: “The Māori get at least half of everything afforded by the government, and their ‘ways of knowing’ would be considered coequal to modern knowledge (including in science and medicine). Further, Māori, as ‘sacred victims’, would get priority in educational opportunities and, in this case, medical treatment.”
If you read The treaty of Waitangi, you’ll see it says nothing of the sort. It simply establishes rights of governance and possession in a deal between Europeans and Māori. But the Māori have used it to inflict considerable guilt on the non-Māori population, to the extent that you simply cannot question the interpretation of the treaty above, or of the increasing forms of “affirmative action” for Māori, because people who raise those questions, like the baffled nurses above, risk losing their jobs. This is the reason that virtually every academic and citizen who writes to me from New Zealand about the fulminating and debilitating wokeness of the country asks me to keep their names confidential. The fear of questioning what’s happening in that country is almost worse than the burgeoning affirmative action towards a small moiety of the population. Granted, the Māori have been discriminated against and had it bad for a while, but those days are really over now, and it’s time to treat everyone according to the same rules. And of course nurses know that they have to have different bedside manners towards different patients. But that doesn’t mean that they must treat some of them with chants and prayers.
Well, on to the rules. And they begin, in the very first directive, by emphasizing the importance of the Treaty of Waitangi!. I’ll post screenshots as well as text, and will highlight some bits in red. Here’s the first page of “standards of competence”. Te Tiriti doesn’t take long to appear!
Click to view
“Pou” are “standards”. Here are the first two. Note that the introduction to the document doesn’t say explicitly that these standards are culture-directed and a subset of other standards of nursing skill. No, these are just “the standards.”
Pou one: Māori health. Reflecting a commitment to Māori health, registered nurses must support, respect and protect Māori rights while advocating for equitable and positive health outcomes. Nurses are also required to demonstrate kawa whakaruruhau by addressing power imbalances and working collaboratively with Māori.
Pou two: Cultural safety Cultural safety in nursing practice ensures registered nurses provide culturally safe care to all people. This requires nurses to understand their own cultural identity and its impact on professional practice, including the potential for a power imbalance between the nurse and the recipient of care.
The two pou expanded, which are directives about how registered nurses are supposed to behave.
Click images to view
Under standard (pou) #4, called “Pūkengatanga [expertise] and evidence-informed nursing practice”, we see this.
Click to view
What is Rongoā? Ask the Museum of New Zealand, which describes it as “Māori medicine”, characterizing it like this:
In traditional Māori medicine, ailments are treated in a holistic manner with:
- spiritual healing
- the power of karakia [prayers of incantations]
- the mana [supernatural essence] of the tohunga (expert)
- by the use of herbs.
It goes on and on in this vein, consistently outlining standards of care that favor Māori, and then ending with a glossary heavily laden with woke and postmodern terms, Again, these are being given to registered nurses (no, not shamans) to tell them how they must behave. A few items from the glossary, which have no clear connection with nursing:
Click each image to view
Again, as far as I can determine, these are not just standards for nurses to become culturally sensitive, but appear to be general standards for nurses that want to be qualified as nurses. And the standards have become so ideological and political that—and I don’t say this lightly—they seem pretty racist, favoring one group over another and telling nurses to afford indigenous people care and treatment that others don’t get. Is there to be no cultural sensitivity towards Asians, who have their own form of indigenous herbal medicine?
Here are some sentiments expressed by Jenny Marcroft, the Health Spokesperson for the New Zealand First political party.
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It goes without saying that it nurses must do all this stuff to practice their skills, many might be compelled to leave New Zealand and practice overseas, something that the country can’t afford to happen. And so, because opponents of this stuff are silenced, the country, immersed in wokeness, continues to go downhill.
Professor Jerry Coyne is an American biologist known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design, a prolific scientist and author. This article was first published HERE
11 comments:
And we wonder why we can’t employ nurses! I can’t believe the coalition government would be so stupid as to let this sort of tripe pass into laws. No wonder people from all walks of life are leaving the country in droves.
Hello Jerry, I have no fear of reprisal from Maori activists and their woke fellow traveler European enablers, so I'll state my full name now: Mr. Sandy Fontwit from Nelson, New Zealand (That's the official and only name of this country NOT "Aotearoa").
I'm a European who immigrated here, on my yacht, 35 years ago from the USA. This country has changed almost beyond recognition in the 35 years I've been here. The almost complete take over of institutions by Maori radical activists and their fellow travelers (greatly accelerated by the last Labour government under Ardern) is a fact. The document He puapua, secretly commissioned by the Ardern government and hidden from its coalition partner New Zealand First, lays out the plan to transform New Zealand from a liberal democracy to an ethno apartheid state with special raced based privileges to part-Maori.
https://www.nzcpr.com/he-puapua/
https://www.nzcpr.com/capturing-a-country/
I say "part Maori" because there are no full blood Maori in New Zealand. All present day citizens "identifying as" Maori are the result of more than 200 years of intermarriage between Maori and (mostly) Europeans. Its gotten to the absurd point that anyone can get a facial tattoo and call themselves a Maori even though they look like a European and have a European surname.
I'll state right here that Maori are NOT "indigenous" by any definition, and you should not use that word to describe them. They, like everyone in New Zealand, are immigrants. Maori, by their own proud admission, came to New Zealand on ocean going outrigger canoes from Eastern Polynesia around 1,400 years ago. By contrast, Australian Aborigines who have been in Australia for 60,000 years and have no stories about coming from somewhere else, are truly indigenous by any definition. Also, it is by means a settled fact that Maori were the first immigrants to New Zealand.
Like you Jerry, and many of the silent majority here in New Zealand, I am amazed and saddened by the epidemic of woke racist madness in my adopted country. The Nurses directive is just one example of the utter mass insanity that is going on here. Practically EVERY institution, both public and private, is infected. Real estate agents are required to take a course in the Maori "world view" or lose their licenses. Yes truly an asylum....
It is an asylum all right and the lunatics have taken it over! Can someone please pass the Valium?
The NZ Health system is broken, fractured and ailing enough already without pandering to the whims of flakes and quackery.
Health Minister - get off your arse and sort it!
Creative New Zealand would probably have paid the Nursing Council a lump sum bonus if only they’d thought to include dealing to white males with pig hunting knives… Come on National and Minister Reti - we voted for govt to end racist rubbish like this. One year later and still it’s being rammed down our throats with monotonous regularity. Clear the swamp! Taxpayers shouldn't be funding this cr*p. Our trainee nurses shouldn’t have to put up with it and nor should first year Auckland Uni students have to endure and pass a Te Ao Maori paper. Forcing this stuff on people is wrong, wrong, wrong. Heads should roll at the Nursing Council, Ak Uni funding should be cut. Luxon’s soft-pedalling “case by case” basis is a joke.
Our 'health' system is seeped in ideology derived from a the belief man made patented pharmaceuticals ( including vaccines) are the way forward. It originally came early last century from the Roche fellas, whose business model has dominated by cancelling out natural products and replacing them with medicines made in labs.
It is not true that herbal and other natural products are all untested.
Some have gone through rigorous double blind studies and proved to be effective. They usually don't have the side effects that most pharmaceuticals have.
Most cultures, including Europe have herbal and food remedies .that have been time tested. My experience is that these are unreasonably condemned and ridiculed by modern practitioners.. Just recently research at Otago Universitiy has revealed Vit C , reduces symptoms of flu. yet that was something I have been ridiculed about , even with ignorant suggestions , I was causing harm by giving it to family members.
The epidemic of obesity is a result of modern medicine's refusal to focus on nutrition. Little research is being done on the harmful ingredients in processed food consumed by the low social -economic section of society , many of whom are Maori.
Modern medicine has much that that is foolish and harmful .No wonder Maori are turning to their herbal traditions. Thirty percent of those attending the parliamentary protest against covid vaccines and other draconian mandates were Maori. About fifteen percent of the total.population, including me, agreed with them.
I am so glad that I have given up nursing, there is no way anyone is going to require me to learn a language that is used nowhere else in the world.
I am more than happy for anyone to chose their own treatment, and if Māori want to use their own herbal treatments so be it, but I wouldn’t be happy to prescribe these (as a nurse), anymore than I would prescribe any herbal medicines, they are for those who want to specialise in this area.
Many phytochemicals have physiological effects and herbal medicines can be pretty potent - the classic case is foxglove which contains the drug digitalis still used in the treatment of some heart ailments today. Some readers will enjoy having a look at Nicholas Culpepper's herbal pharmacopoea. Culpepper was a 17th-century physician who wrote manuals in English so that ordinary people could access herbal remedies rather than being ripped off by the doctors of the day.
There is definitely a scientific side of herbal medicine but the conceptual frameworks of yesteryear - e.g. Theory of Signatures and medical astrology - have to give way to modern scientific testing. A complicating factor here is that folklore (zero scientific basis) has had a formative role in herbal medicine as well.
The difference between a herbal medicine and a pharmaceutical product is often whether the drug companies can isolate a molecule that is responsible for the effect and either synthesise it or work out a complex way of extracting it that can be patented, since you can't patent a herb in itself.
I am all for serious research on herbal medicine that can present itself in a systematic form and lends itself to empirical testing. Anything to weaken the vice-hold that Big Pharma has on Western medicine. But it has to be done properly or we will simply become the playthings of avaricious charlatans which is the category most faith healers and 'cultural' healers fall into.
Get it done by Christmas
Gaynor says "No wonder Maori are turning to their herbal traditions" If that's the case, I say no wonder their health outcomes are so bad when compared with non- Maori, and no wonder their life expectancy is so much lower than non- Maori. But as the mob on the Parliamentary lawn would say, their body, their choice. Just don't blame the evils of colonialism.
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