Job Title: NZ Harkness Fellow 2023-24, The Commonwealth Fund; Chief Advisor, Māori Crown Relations, Ministry of Health
Bio: Louise Kuraia, BA, LLB, is the 2023–24 Aotearoa New Zealand Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice. She is an indigenous wahine (woman) of the Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Manu, and Kōhatutaka tribes of the far north of the country who lives amongst her people and works from her ancestral homelands of Te Tai Tokerau (Northland). Louise is the Chief Advisor, Māori Crown Relations in the Māori Health Directorate of the Ministry of Health, who are chief stewards of the health system and policy advisors to the Minister of Health. She previously worked for more than 20 years in tribally owned partnership, primary and community health organizations to advance Māori health equity and address systemic racism through giving practical effect to the rights and responsibilities of Māori and the Crown under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) New Zealand’s founding document. Louise has served on multiple national health advisory and strategy groups, bringing her extensive expertise and experience in applying Treaty principles of partnership, equity, self-determination, options, and active protection of Māori knowledge to drive change in complex systems. She is a widowed māmā (mother) of three fine young men and is excited to bring her whole self to the Harkness experience.
Placement: National Indian Health Board
Mentors: Bette Jacobs; Stacy Bohlen
Project: Culture Leads, Culture Knows, Culture Heals: An Exploration of Transformative Indigenous Health Systems on Turtle Island, Hawai’i, and Sápmi
Description: Research Objectives
Culture Leads, Culture Knows, Culture Heals—the theme of the 2023 National Tribal Health Conference—guided my year as a Māori scholar and Harkness Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health. I explored the transformative power of Indigenous health systems, policies, and practices through site visits, courses, and gatherings across the continental US, Hawai‘i, and Norway.
Māori share similar colonial histories with Native American and Sámi peoples—histories of imposed systems that dispossessed Indigenous peoples of land, language, and life. Yet, the communities I visited are thriving, reclaiming stories, and restoring ways of knowing, being, and living.
Study Design
Guided by Indigenous research principles of listening, learning, sharing, and cultural exchange, I engaged with health leaders, kaimahi (workers), scholars, and communities in wānanga (gatherings). Following my nannies’ teachings, I sought to be a good manuhiri (visitor)—respectful, humble, and reciprocal in relationships. I embraced the roles of tauira (student), kaiako (teacher), and kaiwhakamārama (illuminator), learning from elders, sharing Māori culture and tikanga (values), and bridging Māori, Indigenous, and Western knowledge systems.
My key research pātai (questions) asked how Indigenous health leaders in Turtle Island and Hawai‘i are using traditional knowledge to transform community well-being, and what lessons their mahi (work) offer for advancing sovereignty, self-determination, health equity, and dismantling systemic racism in Aotearoa.
Principal Findings and Implications
New pathways emerged through international collaboration and shared strategies for decolonizing and indigenizing institutions. Indigenous peoples collectively resist and reimagine systems to create conditions for Pae Ora—flourishing futures.
While Māori health policy became more adverse during my time abroad, Native peoples’ resilience in enduring centuries of hostile policy offers lessons in survivance, sovereignty, and strength.