Karanga rua – Calling Māori and Pacific students to be vets

Professor Eloise Jillings (Ngāti Maru Hauraki) is a veterinarian and educator at Massey University’s Tāwharau Ora – School of Veterinary Science. Her work with VetMAP (Veterinary Māori and Pacific) creates pathways for increasing equity of participation and success for Māori and indigenous Pacific students in veterinary science. Eloise encourages rangatahi Māori to be interested in veterinary science.

Transcript

Professor Eloise Jillings (Ngāti Maru Hauraki, veterinarian and educator, Massey University)

To any rangatahi Māori out there, yes, there may not be a lot of Māori veterinarians right now, but the only way that changes is through you.

Sometimes our potential students have a question of am I Māori enough? For us in the VetMAP pathway, if you want to become a veterinarian and you have whakapapa Māori, that is enough. You don’t need to be able to kōrero reo Māori since you were a child, you don’t need to have participated in kapa haka. You do need to be committed to your identity as Māori. If you’re committed to that then we can help you move on that journey. We can also help support your aspirations of becoming a veterinarian.

I moved to Canada when I was quite young, so for a lot of my life, I grew up essentially Canadian with a tan. Even though I am Māori, for a lot of my life, I didn’t really have a strong concept of what that actually meant for me. Since I came back to Aotearoa almost 30 years ago when I went to vet school, it has been a real journey of growth.

I can see the inequities that, you know, Māori face. I feel really grateful that I have an amazing colleague who works with me in our equity pathway programme to look after and care for our students.

What we just do now is we provide a holistic pathway that actually recognises who they are and doesn’t just try to expect them to conform to being the majority when they walk in our front door. And for those who are actually newer on the identity journey, it allows them to discover and figure out what it means to them to be Māori, to be indigenous.

What is so difficult for me is that these students actually are selected under the same criteria. They have to graduate by passing all of the same assessments and yet still these lingering fallacies of being ‘lesser than’ persist. So it’s definitely not easier, but man, it feels better when you’re among whānau. Kia ora.

Acknowledgements

Professor Eloise Jillings, Tāwharau Ora – School of Veterinary Science, Massey University Advisors: Professor Georgina Tuari Stewart and Dr Sally Birdsall VetMAP, Tāwharau Ora – School of Veterinary Science, Massey University