May the People Live: A History of Maori Health Development, 1900- 1920, and: Maori Health and Government Policy, 1840-1940 (review)

Raeburn Lange. May the People Live: A History of Maori Health Development, 1900-1920. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1999. xiii + 359 pp. Ill. $N.Z. 39.95 (paperbound, 1-86940-214-6).

Derek A. Dow. Maori Health and Government Policy, 1840-1940. Wellington, N.Z.: Victoria University Press, 1999. 280 pp. Ill. $N.Z. 39.95 (paperbound, 0-86473-366-6).

Academic histories that explore the intersection between colonialism and the development of institutional structures relevant to the provision of health and related public health services are by no means unusual. Despite this, it has been only recently that historians of health have begun to focus on the developing relationship between health institutions and indigenous peoples within the context of settler colonial societies such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Adding to this growing focus in historical research, Raeburn Lange's and Derek Dow's recently published studies of New Zealand's Maori health history have made a valuable contribution.

Perhaps an obvious distinguishing feature of settler colonial societies is the fact that the colonists remain to become the dominant population group in a newly constructed colonial society. These states also have social dynamics that distinguish them from the colonial states formed in the wake of European colonialism on, for example, the African and Asian continents. Settler colonial states entwined the social dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands, their natural and cultural resources, with the management of the colonized within the structures of state. There were significant differences between these nation-states in the approach taken to colonial governance, which in part reflected the way in which the colonized had been incorporated into the colonial and regional economy. Nevertheless, the implications for this particular form of colonialism and the development of health structures require further investigation. How, for example, did settler colonial administrative structures and processes and the responses of indigenous peoples affect the developing relationship of those peoples with their health-care systems? Historical work of this nature also promises to elucidate the distinct ways in which colonial and cultural processes shaped the development of modernist health systems.

Although there are many points of connection between Lange's and Dow's histories, their narratives differ in terms of both the historical periods covered and the approaches used in analysis. Nevertheless, the two authors are engaged in the common task of exploring and explaining a critical period in Maori health: the first few decades of this century. This was a period of energetic reform. Even though the momentum of this reform was later to falter, a number of key changes in the administration and delivery of health programs are witness to the emerging significance of Maori health within the governance of the New Zealand health system. Significant social change continued to be a feature of Maori community life, as Lange illustrates with the accounts he provides of the different social, political, and religious movements that emerged during this period. In particular, both Lange and Dow describe a new generation of Maori leadership that had emerged by the end of the nineteenth century--the first to be professionally educated within the colonial education system, including physicians, nurses, and lawyers. A number of these individuals were to play a critical role in mediating between government, professional health structures, and their people's health.

Derek Dow takes the longer historical perspective in charting the development of Maori health policy initiatives from 1840 until 1940. He attempts to describe the scope of various programs, although without a detailed focus on policy outcomes. This is made more difficult because of the ad hoc and piecemeal developments in the New Zealand health system in these years. His narrative is organized into sequential historical periods, with the evidence collated thematically. In particular, Dow...