Challenges to psychology in Aotearoa

Maori people are putting up with a lot right now. If governments can transfer $20 billion in the past ten years for hand outs and write offs to Pakeha people who have endured little, then they can do a lot better than the$150 million they’ve transferred to our people that have endured so much for 150 years. The big issue is still the Treaty, and the need to re-negotiate this nation’s management. The challenge is to design a political system that is based on Maori ways of doing things rather than Pakeha ways of doing things. To achieve this requires relinquishing colonial patterns of thinking and the certainty that pakeha people and their ways are superior to Maori. For psychologists the issue is their role in maintaining Pakeha economic and political power. It may well be that psychologists provide lousy value for money from the Maori point of view, but provide excellent value for money from the government’s point of view