MEASURING MĀORI WELLBEING: A COMMENTARY

Māori wellbeing is the foundation of Māori development, yet Indigenous peoples (including Māori) are often invisible in universal measures of wellbeing. In 2006 Mason Durie outlined Māori-specific measures of wellbeing, built upon Māori understandings of what constitutes a “good life”. Following Durie this paper describes developments in the culturally responsive measurement of Māori wellbeing. These have culminated in Te Kupenga, the 2013 survey of Māori wellbeing by New Zealand Statistics, and two Māori mental wellbeing assessment tools, Hua Oranga and the Meihana Model. Gaps remain in the measurement of collective Māori wellbeing, or whānau ora, with individual reporting on whānau wellbeing currently being used as a proxy. More information is also needed about Māori subjective wellbeing in order for this to be fully captured in measurement tools. The close involvement of Māori in the development of any wellbeing measure is essential for that measure to be culturally responsive and valid.