Māui Pōmare

Māui Pōmare (born January 13, 1876, Pahou Pa, New Zealand—died June 27, 1930, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was a Māori statesman and physician whose public health work helped revive New Zealand’s Māori population, which had declined nearly to extinction by the late 19th century.

Pōmare was educated at Te Aute College in Hawkes Bay, where he helped form the Young Māori Party. He became a Māori health officer in 1900 and worked to improve medical care and hygiene in Māori settlements in an effort to overcome resistance to European medical practices. Largely through Pōmare’s efforts, the Tohunga Suppression Act (1907) was passed, which prohibited unqualified medical treatment in native communities.

As a member of Parliament from 1911 to 1930 and minister for the Māori people (1912–28), Pōmare helped form two royal commissions that allowed the Taranaki Māori to buy back their ancestral lands and compensated tribes that had lost land in the Waitara district. His term as minister of health (1923–26) under William Ferguson Massey was noted for the reorganization of New Zealand’s mental hospitals. As minister for the Cook Islands (1916–28), Pōmare helped to improve the islands’ educational and legal systems and fought monopoly trading interests. After his health declined in 1928, he collaborated with James Cowan in writing The Legends of the Māori.

He was knighted in 1922.