Rongoā Māori

Rongoā Māori is the traditional healing system of Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand. It includes herbal remedies (rongoā rākau), treatment of the body such as mirimiri (massage) and spiritual care with karakia (prayers and incantations). The knowledge was passed on orally.

When the Polynesian ancestors of Māori arrived by canoe some seven hundred years ago, they found a plant world that was largely new to them. Over generations of careful observation they built up knowledge of native plants such as kawakawa, harakeke, mānuka and kōwhai. When Europeans arrived, an extensive system of care already existed, with knowledge of the body and of the healing power of plants.

Colonisation brought new diseases, loss of land and pressure to follow European medicine. In 1907 parliament passed the Tohunga Suppression Act, aimed at tohunga who healed by appealing to spiritual powers. Strikingly, the law was supported by influential Māori, including the physician Māui Pōmare and the politician Āpirana Ngata, out of concern about charlatans and public health. There were few convictions, but rongoā disappeared from view and some tohunga stopped passing on their knowledge. The law was only repealed in 1962.

In rongoā, health is never only physical. A person is connected with their whānau (family), their ancestors, the land and the spiritual world. Illness can point to a disturbed relationship with nature, with others or with what is sacred.

A few concepts are indispensable here. Tapu is what is sacred or restricted and must be protected; noa is the ordinary, the free. Mauri is the life force in people, plants, rivers and forests. Wairua is the spirit. Mana is the spiritual authority and standing of a person or family: someone who knows their mana has a say over their own life and space. Traditionally a distinction was made between conditions with a visible cause, such as injuries, and mate atua: illnesses with a spiritual cause, for example after breaking tapu, which needed the help of a tohunga. Today people often speak of mate Māori. Possible causes include a broken tapu, unresolved conflict within the whānau or a conflict that has carried on for generations.

The bond with the land is literal. After a birth the placenta is buried in the family's land, with Papatūānuku, the earth mother. The word whenua means both placenta and land.

The same thinking echoes in the modern model Te Whare Tapa Whā by the Māori health scientist Mason Durie, from the 1980s. It describes health as a house with four walls: the body (taha tinana), the mind (taha hinengaro), the spiritual (taha wairua) and the family (taha whānau). If one wall falls away, the house totters. According to Durie the spiritual wall is the foundation of the other three.

The educator Rose Pere described health as Te Wheke, an octopus. The head stands for the whānau, the eyes for waiora, the well-being of person and family together. The eight tentacles include the spiritual, the mind, the body, family ties, mauri, one's own identity (mana ake), the breath of the ancestors (hā a koro mā a kui mā) and the healthy expression of feelings (whatumanawa). They are interwoven, like the arms of an octopus.

Tohunga were experts recognised as such by their community, and often also priestly figures. Knowledge of rongoā lived with them and within families. Learning happened through apprenticeship: listening to elders, walking along, getting to know the forest and knowing which karakia goes with picking.

There is no uniform doctrine. Practice differs by iwi (tribe), by hapū (sub-tribe) and by practitioner, and there is no fixed agreement on diagnosis or prescription. Mason Durie does describe a common course in three steps. First the healer looks not only at the complaint but also at a possible broken tapu and at problems in the family, including those from earlier generations. Then comes spiritual repair, for example with karakia or a ritual of reconciliation. Finally comes the remedy itself: mirimiri, rongoā rākau, or treatments with water and heat. Harvesting is governed by tikanga, customs that determine how and when you pick: with a karakia, and never more than is needed.

After the years of suppression that transmission was deliberately restored. In 1993 Ngā Ringa Whakahaere o te Iwi Māori, a national organisation of traditional Māori healers, was formed. Today practitioners still learn from elders, supplemented by wānanga, Māori learning settings where knowledge is passed on on Māori terms.

Rongoā has no classical written canon. The knowledge lives in whakapapa (genealogy), karakia, songs and stories. Written sources came later and often from outside, from missionaries, botanists and ethnographers. They are valuable, but give only part of the whole.

A well-known reference work is Murdoch Riley’s Māori Healing and Herbal of 1994, which brings together hundreds of plants and their uses. For the history, figures such as Māui Pōmare and Āpirana Ngata are also important. They worked for Māori health, but also supported the law that drove rongoā underground. That shows how complicated that time was.

An important modern document is Ko Aotearoa Tēnei of 2011, the Waitangi Tribunal’s report on the Wai 262 claim. The claim, lodged in 1991, concerned the management of native plants, animals and Māori knowledge. The report devotes a separate chapter to rongoā.

How rongoā and Western medicine can work together is described in the book Collaborative and Indigenous Mental Health Therapy: Tātaihono (2017). The healer Wiremu NiaNia worked from 2005 as cultural therapist at Te Whare Mārie, the Māori mental health service in Porirua. With the child psychiatrist Allister Bush and the therapist David Epston he describes how healer and psychiatrist work side by side with young people and their families. Tātaihono is NiaNia's word for this collaboration: a bond that asks for repair, reconciliation and mutual respect.

Rongoā is clearly experiencing a revival. Since the 1990s it has had a place in the health system: from 1995 regional health authorities could purchase rongoā services, and in 1999 the Ministry of Health, together with Ngā Ringa Whakahaere, published standards for traditional healing. They include agreements on referral to other health workers, on patients' rights and on the safe preparation, storage and labelling of herbal remedies.

Since around 2020 ACC, New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme, has funded rongoā as part of recovery after injury. It follows the Waitangi Tribunal’s description, including mirimiri, whitiwhiti kōrero (conversation and advice) and karakia. In 2023 ACC worked with some 150 practitioners throughout the country.

Many Māori combine rongoā with Western medicine. GPs are encouraged to ask about it, so that care can fit together. In mental health care, Māori units and services arose from the 1980s onwards, where Māori customs, elders (kaumātua) and sometimes healers have a fixed place alongside regular treatment.

Rongoā rākau, plant medicine, uses the native flora. Kawakawa (Piper excelsum) is perhaps the best-known plant: the leaves are used for toothache, small wounds and painful joints, and as a tea. The sticky sap of harakeke (flax) serves for wounds and burns. Mānuka and kānuka were used for coughs and stomach complaints, mamaku (the black tree fern) for sores and diarrhoea.

Knowledge of plants also means knowledge of danger. Tutu (Coriaria) contains a poison that can be fatal, and other plants too are only safe if properly prepared.

Plants do not stand apart from the rest. A treatment can combine herbs with mirimiri, with water from a spring or river, and with karakia that place the care in a spiritual context.

Rongoā is taonga: precious heritage that belongs to Māori. Not all knowledge is meant for outsiders, and tikanga determines who may do what. Read this chapter as background, not as a manual.

NiaNia and Bush warn of misunderstandings in both directions. A spiritual experience, such as seeing or hearing a deceased relative, can wrongly be taken for psychosis, but such experiences can also hide a serious illness. That is why they work together and do not simply stop regular treatment. Anyone with such complaints does well to consult both a doctor and someone from their own community.

Anyone who buys products with kawakawa or mānuka touches on questions about ownership of knowledge and nature. That is exactly what the Wai 262 claim was about. If you are interested, choose sources and products from Māori makers themselves.