Amohia Boulton
Ngāti Ranginui, Ngai te Rangi, Ngāti Pukenga, Ngāti Mutunga, Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui
Dr Amohia Boulton is the Director of Whakauae Research Services, a tribally-owned, Indigenous health research centre in Whanganui.
She also holds adjunct positions at the Health Services Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington and in the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences at Auckland University of Technology.
Dr Boulton is a member of the Healthier Lives, He Oranga Hauora National Science Challenge, Governance Group Kahui Māori, a Board member of Te Kotahi Research Centre, University of Waikato, and a Technical Advisor to the National iwi Chairs’ Forum.
Leaving no-one behind: Features of a Māori-led pandemic response
For Māori, news of COVID-19 heralded a period of significant distress. We recalled the
impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on our communities and the devastation wrought
on our people. Despite the deadly nature of this new threat, the expected outcome, one
where Māori lives were lost at an exponential rate compared with non-Māori, was
avoided. That Covid-19 did not achieve a stranglehold within Māori communities is the
result, in part, of the national public health measures that were implemented at the time.
However it was also due to very specific cultural resources, skills and values that we
deploy as Māori in response to potential threats. This session will explore some of these
values and skills – whanaungatanga, kotahitanga, manaakitanga and our ability to
communicate with our people – that Māori used not only to ensure the safety and
wellbeing of ourselves as tangata whenua, but also of our tangata Tiriti partners.
