11.    Conditions or symptoms of illness or impairment that the Western view may see as deformities requiring hospitalisation and treatment are not necessarily viewed the same in Te Ao Māori. In fact, in Te Ao Māori an indifference towards such ‘deformities’ may exist.^[22] As Mr Hector Kaiwai and Dr Tanya Allport said, “the concept of ‘disability’, as it has been understood in the modern Western medical paradigm, had no equivalent within Te Ao Māori.”^[23]

12.    Within Te Ao Māori, hauora is understood holistically. Healers or tohunga are concerned not just with the physical health (taha tinana) but also spiritual wellbeing (taha wairua), cognitive and mental health (taha hinengaro) and the wellbeing of the wider whānau (taha whānau). Healing addressed both the physical symptoms of any ailment and its spiritual or metaphysical causes.^[24] Good health was, and still is, found by achieving balance in all these areas, rather than by trying to treat and address a single underlying cause. Traditionally physical injuries, or mate tangata, have been treated through the application of rongoa. For ailments without obvious physical causes, such as mental distress or mate atua, tohunga focused on identifying and restoring a likely breach of tapu manifested by symptoms.^[25]

13.    European colonisation, as well as the devastating impact of introduced diseases, significantly affected Māori systems of health and healing.^[26] Although the Government’s attempt to outlaw tohunga ultimately did not succeed, legislation such as the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 played a significant part in suppressing Māori healing practices, by driving them underground and making mātauranga Māori illegal.^[27]

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