A brief response to Hawkins: a call for socially responsive research in Māori health

We were disappointed to see the pejorative ‘Māori as warrior’ trope revived in a recent article in the Journal.¹ In his commentary on Māori nutrition and anthropometrics, Hawkins provocatively asks ‘were warriors once low carb?’ and in so doing immediately brings to mind discredited stereotypes of Māori being congenitally predisposed to violence, a view that was widely criticised in the ‘warrior gene’ controversy over a decade ago.^2–5

The choice of title is regrettable enough, but the article itself is also problematic. Hawkins’ argument is that obesity among Māori is due to the post-colonial adoption of a European diet characterised by excessive consumption of carbohydrates, and his proposed solution is to switch to a high fat, low carbohydrate diet, which he contends is closer to the pre-colonisation Māori diet. While there may be value in considering the impact of post-colonisation dietary change, it is highly unlikely that this change in diet is the sole cause of the rise in obesity among Māori. Hawkins is completely silent on any of the other well recognised damaging effects of colonisation on Māori health. Among these, historical trauma, loss of land, impoverishment and loss of mana, and the consequent persistent social and cultural stressors are highly likely to contribute to obesity and other chronic disease among Māori.^6,7 Ignoring these potent forces and taking a narrow and simplistic biomedical approach to dietary change is unlikely to be effective in improving health.

The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners is rightly committed to achieving health equity for Māori.⁸ This goal is ill served by the College’s journal re-hashing crude stereotypes and ignoring the wide-ranging adverse effects of colonisation on Māori health, and we call on the Journal to strengthen its approach in this area.

The authors declare no competing interests.

This research did not receive any funding.