Is it Getting Better?

The striking debut memoir There’s A Cure For This by Emma Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) won her the Best First Book Award for General Non-fiction at the 2024 Ockham Awards. Funny, incisive and, at times, heartbreaking, it also provides a fierce and gutsy perspective of joining the healthcare system as a Māori junior doctor. Emma is joined by Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui), Aotearoa’s first Māori law professor and now Otago University’s inaugural deputy vice chancellor, Māori, for a wide-ranging discussion on reducing institutional barriers to Māori advancement.

Dr Emma Wehipeihana is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and political commentator. Her podcast on Māori health equity, Getting Better: A Year in the Life of a Māori Medical Student won the Voyager Best Narrative Podcast of the Year in 2021. In 2020 she won the Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards, and her work has featured on Newsroom, Stuff, The Guardian, NZ Herald, and in academic and literary journals and books. Emma lives in Auckland, where she works at Middlemore Hospital as a surgical registrar.

Distinguished Professor Jacinta Ruru MNZM, FRSNZ, was appointed as the inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Māori in March 2024. Her research considers how state legal systems should reconcile with their Indigenous peoples, their laws and knowledges. Her work has advanced options including legal personality of the environment and creating a bijural legal education. Jacinta has been appointed to many working groups and other entities including the NZ Law Society, NZ Law Commission, Royal Society Te Apārangi and the Waitangi Tribunal to provide research informed advice. She is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and law.