Te kōrero o Hiria Minnell-Rolleston , Hiria's story
Ko Hikurangi te maunga
Ko Waiapu te awa
Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi
Ko Te Aowera te hapū
Ko Hiruharama te marae
Hiria Minnell-Rolleston, project manager with Mo Wai te Ora, Māori Health Services of Waitemata District Health Board, has been a staunch advocate for Māori to live as smokefree tangata whenua.
| Hiria Minnell-Rolleston (Ngāti Porou) and Tinikai Rolleston (Ngāti Ranginui), 2008. |
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Hiria is very well travelled – she has represented New Zealand in Korea at the world Tae Kwon Do tournament, and has travelled many times overseas to participate in indigenous discussions for tobacco control in Hawaii and in India.
She has four years experience working in the Auahi Kore and Tupeka Kore network, firstly with ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) and then with Te Reo Marama, the Māori Smokefree Coalition, as an advocate for both organisations. She is also currently a member of the Smokefree Schools committee, a subsidiary of the National Smokefree Working Group.
Hiria has a Bachelor of Sport and Recreation degree from AUT University and a Graduate Diploma in Teaching from the University of Waikato. She is currently completing her Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health with AUT University.
Moana Tāne, Māori Health Manager, PHARMAC caught up with Hiria recently and they chatted over coffee – here are some snippets of the conversation.
Of Ngāti Porou whakapapa, Hiria is all about authenticity, walking the talk.
For me, it’s about self determination. How can you talk about tino rangatiratanga, and when your korero is done, you walk out the back and light up? That is so contradictory to me.
We as whānau have a responsibility to each other and our communities. If you look at health in the population, there is a small percentage of people who don’t tow the line i.e. they don’t practice what they preach.
For Māori who are seeking to find themselves, it’s about walking the talk – if you talk about tuakana and teina relationships, then you have to live like this.
Elders who die early from smoking – there is the potential for losing Matauranga, our knowledge; to me, that’s a massive hara. That’s taking away the rights of mokopuna to receive that knowledge – it is cut off.
Our kaumātua are our leaders – so how can we challenge them about what they are doing?
And at the end of the day, it comes down to the social responsibility we have to our whānau, hapu and iwi, and own contribution toward that.
When asked the question, “Why should Māori stop smoking?” Hiria took a moment to ponder:
There are many benefits – there are the immediate ones, like being around long enough to transfer your knowledge on to the whānau.
Looking at smoking the other way, from the disadvantages of smoking – it affects everyone in your whānau, hapu and iwi, and flows onto everybody else! And for the smoker, he or she is the only one who gets any benefit!
If we can get people to see it as we see it – that we are all a part of their smoking, their lives – that we are all connected. Oranga relates to the environment as well. One part affects the other and all parts link back to the whānau, hapu and iwi. That is whānau ora.
You can’t get away from our smokers for the same reason that you put up with your whānau – you can’t choose your relations! We don’t have a choice, so those of us who don’t smoke need to be part of the solution. Creating a supportive environment for quitting cigarettes is so important.
Hiria has represented as an advocate and as a brilliant example of what an Auahi Kore tamawahine is all about. She shared from her personal experiences about her journey as a smokefree person:
Whenever kaimahi hauora, friends, whānau look at me as a Smokefree person, when they talk to me about it, I try to detach from the personal. However, if I am pressed then I will share my personal story.
I lost my mother at the age of 11. If she was here, she could have passed on to me all her knowledge and skills.
I don’t think about the disease, or the negative health impacts – I think about all the positives that I might have had.
It’s not a nice thing to have happen. It’s hard. And something you wouldn’t want your whānau to go through. That’s the ugly side and I don’t like to dwell on that.
Hiria’s mother July Minnell was diagnosed with lung cancer (Glossary description: Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. This growth may lead to metastasis, which is the invasion of adjacent tissue and infiltration beyond the lungs. The vast majority of primary lung cancers are carcinomas of the lung, derived from epithelial cells. The most common symptoms are shortness of breath, coughing (including coughing up blood), and weight loss.) at the age of 46 and sadly passed at the age of 48. During this time a TVNZ crew completed a documentary which followed her through her last year. The documentary was named July’s Legacy. Ten years on, the production crew did a follow up documentary.
When I see a young Māori smoking, I get upset, because I think of my situation, growing up without a mother, and I think those young people don’t deserve that.
But, I wouldn’t tell them because I don’t want to put them down.
Hiria believes, that smoking by Māori is not just about smoking – it’s about other things too.
We’ve done so much research about why Māori smoke and it’s all true; it’s related to stress (Glossary description: Stress is a biological term which refers to the consequences of the failure of a human or animal to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats to the organism, whether actual or imagined.), and it’s a statement of rebellion.
I think there’s also a deeper reason – I think Māori default to smoking. It’s about being stereotyped as Māori, like being a young woman with kids, on the benefit, and its playing up to all those stereotypes, as an unconscious thought.
Whether you agree with Hiria’s reasoning or not, the truth remains: 1 in 2 Māori smoke, we smoke at twice the rate of non-Māori and non-Pacific; and our girls smoke younger, during pregnancy and quit less than any other group.
If you’d like to have your say, send your thoughts or comments to the following email address, and we’ll post it up for discussion.
Thanks for taking the time to read.