Investigation by Stuff National Correspondent Tony Wall.
Marama Stewart (Tūhoe) was disturbed by what she was hearing from her students. The Tāneatua School principal had been helping organise Covid vaccination clinics at the school, and was getting worrying feedback.
“They just repeat what they hear at home, and the korero was ... ‘you get magnets’ and ‘it will make you sick’,” Stewart says.
(The risk of infection far outweighs the risk of vaccination for nearly everyone. The idea that the vaccine makes you magnetic is a myth.)
When the Government mandated that teachers must be vaccinated, the misinformation went into overdrive.
Above: Marama Stewart, principal of Tāneatua School, says the Tūhoe board has failed to counter-act Covid vaccine misinformation. Source / Christel Yardley Stuff
“Parents were afraid that I would ban them from school ... they were convinced I was going to force vaccinate [the children] ... and there was a lot of talk about ‘shedding’ of the vaccine.
“I had a nan wanting me to publish the names of the teachers and the kids who’d been vaccinated so she could keep her mokopuna away. It was a very awkward conversation.
“I was very kind, because they’re just scared. No-one had attempted to say ‘that’s not how vaccines work’.”
Eventually, 17 children from a couple of extended families were removed from the school by their parents because of concerns about the vaccine.
Stewart rang around and managed to convince five to return, but the rest have stayed away.
(It is biologically impossible for the vaccine to give you Covid.)
Above: Te Rangimoaho Peyroux, Ruiha Vaevae and Roimata Vaevae chat by a pro-vaccination billboard in the main street of Taneatua. Source / Tony Wall, Stuff
She wondered what she and the school could do to counteract the disinformation and boost vaccination rates.
At the time, well under half of people in the district were fully vaccinated. Now, about 68 per cent of eligible people in the Wainui district, which includes Tāneatua, are double vaccinated, although rates for Māori are lower at 58 per cent double vaccinated and 72 per cent with a first dose.
“My board of trustees had the great idea, if we could get some doctors to come and just sit down, have private conversations with people.
“You don’t have to book in, you don’t have to pay a consultation fee ... we’d put on some food, we’d have a vaccination van just in case.”
Stewart reached out to contacts at the Bay of Plenty District Health Board. “I said ‘help, we’re in trouble here, the misinformation is just out of control’.”
Above: Tāneatua, the gateway to Te Urewera and Tūhoe country. Source / Christel Yardley, Stuff
She says the DHB agreed to help, engaging a PR firm to promote the event and saying it would send doctors and nurses. Māori Party co-leader and Waiariki MP Rawiri Waititi agreed to come.
But soon after publicly announcing the event, Stewart says she got a phone call saying the DHB could no longer send the doctors and the PR firm was stepping back.
Stewart says she was told that someone from the Tūhoe iwi authority, Te Uru Taumatua (TUT), a post-Treaty settlement entity based in Tāneatua, objected to the DHB sending medical staff and promoting the event.
TUT’s chief executive, Kirsti Luke, denies that, saying the organisation didn’t even know about the school’s information evening and hadn’t been asked to support it.
Above: Kirsti Luke, chief executive of the Te Uru Taumatua, says the organisation is working hard to prepare for Covid.
In a statement, the DHB said it provided support including meeting with the school board by video conference and discussing ideas to address misinformation.
It ignored questions about why it did not supply the promised medical staff, instead saying it is “focused on making it as easy and accessible as possible for everyone in Te Moana ā Toi (Bay of Plenty) to get the Covid-19 vaccine”.
Stuff has seen evidence there was concern from senior DHB staff that internal politicking within the iwi, including who should lead the response effort, was putting lives at risk.
Waititi also pulled out of the school event, with no explanation. He did not respond to questions from Stuff.
Stewart says she was devastated when the DHB stepped back, but decided to forge ahead with the event, cold-calling GPs and eventually finding three from Rotorua and Edgecumbe to come, including Junior Doctor of the Year Tawa Hunter.
The event was a success, she says.
“People came with a list of questions and sat quietly with the doctors. I would say the majority walked from the doctors in the classrooms to the vaccine van.”
Stewart claims the iwi authority has failed to counter vaccine misinformation and hasn’t taken a pro-vaccine stance in its literature.
Luke says TUT has done a lot of work preparing for the arrival of the disease, spending $600,000 of its own money on Covid readiness, including a mobile vaccination camper, additional nurses, vaccinator training and supervision and swabbing training.
She says the iwi has been hampered by shortcomings in the Government’s vaccine roll-out, which did not prioritise Māori.
(A special Waitangi Tribunal hearing on whether the Crown had breached the Treaty in its Covid response was told that modelling showed the risk to Māori, but the Government failed to act.)
TUT sought training for vaccinators and accreditation for cold storage of vaccines before the Delta outbreak, Luke says, but no plan was in place at a central or DHB level.
“There was no training early this year offered to Tūhoe. Training works by a series of online webinars, and then requires DHB supervision. It was not easy to access that supervision. It has taken most of the year to achieve that and cold chain accreditation in order to hold and store the vaccine.”
In September, the authority invited the DHB to hold a vaccination day in Tāneatua, at which 99 people were vaccinated, she says.
Cold chain storage accreditation was granted late last month and vaccinators are steadily being trained.
“The iwi is now leading the region in growing its vaccination workforce.”
The Tūhoe-owned Tāneatua Medical Centre now offers vaccinations between 12pm and 2pm every Thursday, Luke says, and there have been pop-up opportunities for vaccination.
“Each repeated opportunity has not just meant vaccinations being administered but also led to ... people asking for information and then later calling to make an appointment.”
Luke says there remains deep mistrust of Government within Tūhoe country. Many of the young people in the lowest-vaccination group were children when the police “terror” raids on Rūātoki happened in 2007, she says, and they are now reluctant to scan QR codes because of their formative experiences with surveillance.
This has meant TUT has had to take a different approach, providing people with notebooks for recording their movements.
Luke says TUT has been preparing for a surge in cases, assembling kits for Covid-positive households including Panadol, oxygen, and pulse oximeters. The iwi has also ordered 10,000 rapid antigen tests from a wholesaler, because “it is untenable to wait for Government action on providing tests”.
Yet Stewart and other community leaders Stuff spoke to remain critical of the iwi’s approach, especially around vaccination.
Stewart also claims there has been a lack of logistical support for testing staff – when there was a Covid case in Waimana Valley in November, she says, people who were supposed to be isolating at home were asked to conduct swabs on others at pop-up sites.
She says TUT has long known that there is a lot of anti-vaccine sentiment in the community.
After a post on Facebook by the iwi in March, asking whether it should be supporting vaccination, people replied with comments including “my family won’t be going near that poison” and “protect yourself from the lies media and Govt are spitting”.
Stewart says the organisation took a “neutral” stance, saying publicly that the choice to vaccinate is a personal one and people with anti-vax views should be respected.
In another Facebook post, the iwi organisation said vaccination was just one element of the approach, which focused on whānau responsibility.
“Yes, vaccination is a mighty response, but bludgeoning and bribing is not whānau responsibility and whānau action,” the post said.
Stewart is scathing of a Covid readiness brochure produced by Tūhoe, titled Tena Koe Covid, which says “so you’ve arrived in Te Urewera, we’ve been expecting you ... this is how we intend to greet you” and listing precautions such as hygiene, social distancing and mask wearing but not stating vaccination is the strongest protection.
“To personify a virus which has killed over 5 million people is abhorrent,” Stewart says. "Unvaccinated people will expedite the spread of this virus though our lands, and TUT are ... welcoming it in. It's ridiculous.”
Luke, however, says experts are forming a consensus that “confrontational approaches” aren’t effective in swaying people’s opinions.
“In fact, even officials suggest whānau-to-whānau relationships are more effective than social media campaigns, for example,” she says.
“On social media ... we encourage people to ask for information, alongside advertising vaccination availability, rather than thrashing out the issues online.
“Tūhoe consider the vaccine to be a very strong line of defence.”
But Stewart questions TUT’s commitment to vaccination, given that it has publicly supported unvaccinated local GP Paul Butler.
She says Tūhoe should have followed the model of neighbouring iwi Te Whānau ā Apanui, which has achieved high vaccination rates with the proactive efforts of a general practice in Te Kaha.
Luke says the Tūhoe rohe is different, in that it sits within the boundaries of four DHBs.
Dedicated health funding for Tūhoe has never existed in the way that it has for Te Whānau Apanui, she says, which has a direct funding relationship with a single DHB.
“Health care for Tūhoe has fallen between the cracks, which is why investment in medical centres was one of Te Uru Taumatua’s first steps after settlement in 2013,” Luke says.
Luke says she, chair Tamati Kruger and all of the TUT executive are vaccinated, but only about 70 per cent of staff are. All staff are working from home.
Toni Boynton, deputy chair of the Tāneatua Community Board, shares Stewart’s concerns about how the iwi authority has prepared for Covid.
She says the readiness plan is “crazy. It’s sort of like, tena koe Covid, welcome to our whare”.
There is not enough emphasis on getting vaccinated, she says.
“I’d like them to be actively supportive in the vaccine roll-out, actively supportive in preparing our people.”
Haromi Williams, director of people and culture for Te Puna Ora o Mataatua, an independent, pan-tribal health trust, says there has been resistance from some in Tūhoe leadership to vaccination clinics run by her organisation, but they have ploughed ahead.
“We just deal with the hapu that invite us to come in. We've just focused on ensuring that the people who wanted to be vaccinated have an opportunity to do that,” she says.
“Irrespective of the kind of politicking that’s going on around us, we just move as we're needed.”
Williams says Te Whānau ā Apanui has shown what can be done when agencies work in sync.
“[They] have a really great relationship with their doctor. It also helps when the doctor actually belongs to that area. You put those two combinations together and things will move quite quickly.
“I think the same thing would have happened here if a consolidated effort had been made by the iwi entity, TUT, as well as the support systems like ours.
“The kind of resourcing that's here is really quite good, it was just bad timing, bad management, I suppose.”
Toi Iti, a Bay of Plenty Regional Councillor, says TUT has talked about offering “access” to the vaccine, “but they certainly haven’t promoted it. They've certainly taken a very hands-off approach.”
He says there is a lot of political squabbling happening within the iwi, including court cases, “but you would hope they would put politics aside, because you’re talking about people’s lives”.
Above: Toi Iti, left, and his father Tame Iti, are critical of the Tūhoe board's approach to vaccines. Source / Christel Yardley, Stuff
Iti says he's heard the iwi authority has been resistant to other groups organising vaccine information events.
“It does speak to a pattern of behaviour that’s come from them, which is basically they want to be the only show in town.”
His father, the Tūhoe activist and artist Tame Iti, says “they just want to control everything”, which he calls “dumb”.
There’s a sign outside Tame Iti’s art studio on the outskirts of Whakatāne asking non-vaccinated people to stay away to “protect our kaumatua Tame”, who is 70 and diabetic.
He says some of his friends are anti-vaxxers. “They’re hanging around with this Trump mentality ... crazy stuff – dangerous too.
“I’ve been vaccinated ever since I was a kid – polio, measles, typhoid – you name it. I hate to be a slave to the disease.”
There is a lot of fear in Tūhoe country about what will happen if Covid goes through the community.
Boynton, from the Tāneatua Community Board, says her family's urupa in Waimana is full of unmarked graves of people who died in the 1918 ‘flu pandemic. They are planning for more deaths.
“When I tried to bring up our plan for Covid, my nan said ‘I’m going to die ... because Covid’s coming – we need to get the new urupa finished’.”
Stewart says she will be painted as a troublemaker or part of a disgruntled iwi faction, but she doesn’t care – the issue is too important.
She wants TUT to take a much more strident approach to getting people vaccinated.
“They've done nothing to stop the misinformation and disinformation that's pervasive through our entire community.
“TUT needs to take responsibility for this, they need to step up and say the vaccine is safe, it is proven and it will save lives.”