November 25, 2024 • 33 mins
Dr. Jane Jones, a pioneering voice in veterinary narratives, invites us into her world as she navigates the complexities of qualitative research in veterinary science.
With a unique focus on the experiences of Māori veterinarians and vet nurses in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Dr Jane's research journey unveils the challenges and rewards of exploring a field with sparse literature.
Her collaboration with Associate Professor Dr Francesca Brown and her dedication to learning Te Reo Māori highlight not only her personal growth but also her commitment to enhancing cultural sensitivity within veterinary practices.
Through this episode (part one of two), you're offered a thoughtful reflection on the intersection of Māori culture and veterinary science, as Dr Jane shares the profound impact of indigenous perspectives on animal care.
We further explore how integrating te reo Māori into veterinary consultations has sparked varied reactions and why understanding Māori views on animals can transform welfare practices.
Dr Jane provides insights from key studies and interviews, unveiling themes of cultural visibility and safety within the profession.
As host, Julie South, and Dr Jane delve into broader historical trends - including language loss and educational struggles among Māori communities - this episode challenges us to reconsider the role of indigenous perspectives in building trust and improving outcomes in veterinary care.
Join Julie South and Dr Jane Jones for a thought-provoking chat that not only enlightens, but also inspires, a rethinking of our approach to cultural dynamics in the veterinary world.
Struggling to get results from your job advertisements?
If so, then shining online as a good employer is essential to attracting the types of veterinary professionals who're a perfect cultural fit for your clinic.
The VetClinicJobs job board is the place to post your next job vacancy - to find out more get in touch with Lizzie at VetClinicJobs
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
How would you describe yourself?
Companion animal veterinarianDr Jane Jones describes herself
as an artist in scientist'sclothing, and it's this passion
for wanting to explore beyondthe absolute numbers and putting
things into boxes that I'm sureyou'll pick up on today as we
(00:30):
talk, as Dr Jane and I talkabout her qualitative research
entitled Experiences of MaoriVeterinarians and Veterinary
Nurses in the VeterinaryProfession in Ōtiroa a narrative
inquiry.
She's doing that with DrFrancesca Brown of Ōtaigo
Polytech.
(00:50):
Welcome to Veterinary Voices.
This is episode 213, and I'myour host, Julie South.
With listeners tuning in fromover 1, 1400 cities worldwide,
(01:10):
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(01:32):
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Dr Jane Jones is a companionanimal veterinarian based in
(01:56):
Otahi, Christchurch, Otiroa, NewZealand.
Dr Jane started out as a mixedpractice veterinarian in
Southland and, despite beingborn in the North Island, has
spent most of her working lifein the South Island In small
animal practice.
Dr Jane has an interest indermatology, Learning Te Reo
(02:17):
over the last three years foroverseas listeners Te Reo is
conversational Maori has been abig journey for Jane.
She's just completed level fiveof eight levels and has
contributed to a growingcuriosity and interest in Te Ao
Māori.
What is Te Ao Māori?
(02:38):
Well, Te Ao Māori is the Māoriworldview.
This includes the culture, thelanguage and the social and
political structures of theMaori people of Aotearoa, New
Zealand.
It's a holistic perspectivethat's strong on the
interconnectedness of all livingand non-living things and the
(03:00):
importance of relationshipsbetween people and nature.
Associated with Dr Jane'sjourney has been a move into the
research space, which is whatwe are chatting about today.
She's currently writing up apaper of qualitative research
entitled, as I said earlier,Experiences of Maori
Veterinarians and VeterinaryNurses in the Veterinary
(03:22):
Profinary profession in Aotearoaa narrative inquiry and she's
doing that with AssociateProfessor Dr Francesca Brown of
Otago Polytech.
In her spare time, Dr Janetells me she loves a robust,
meandering reflection, throwingpoems out to the world, moving,
which includes biking, running,skiing, dancing and tramping,
(03:46):
facilitating creative writing inprison, smelling harakiki
flowers, drinking coffee,singing harmonies and reading
beautifully written books.
She wonders whether sheprobably asks too many hard
questions, but that depends.
We kick off this first part ofDr Jane's and my chat where I
(04:08):
ask her where she started withher research.
Where did you start with thisresearch?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Oh, that's it.
It feels about three years agoI knew Francesca from vet school
and she has been teaching vetnursing for many years at Otago
Poly and the school of OtagoPolytech had been awarded a
Staff Excellence Award for theimplementation of a Māori
(04:42):
strategic framework and thatcame with a grant.
And I had, after a randomconversation with Francesca,
been working with her on anotherpaper.
It was about client experienceswith the veterinary profession
or veterinary sector, and we'reabout to have that paper
published, so it's called ClientExperiences with Veterinary
(05:03):
Professionals and that was anarrative inquiry study where we
interviewed clients about theirexperiences and I'd really
enjoyed doing that research.
I found that I really enjoyedtalking to people and Francesca
said to me well, would you liketo be, would you like to be
involved in this next bit ofresearch on and it had a big
(05:24):
long title Matauranga, māori andthe Veterinary Sector, and I
thought no.
My first thought was I'm notthe right person for that.
I'm not Māori, I'm not theright person.
But at the same time I was juststarting to learn te reo and I
(05:45):
was just starting on this veryearly journey, sort of taking
some steps away from my normalsort of veterinary practice and
starting to become moreinterested and over time, as I
started to learn more about thelanguage, I started to think
well, actually I would be reallyinterested to do this, I'd be
really interested in starting tothink about this space.
(06:07):
So we started with this body ofresearch that I was responsible
for, which was basically like aliterature search on what was
out there already in terms ofMāori and the veterinary sector
and where those thingsintersected.
What I didn't know was that I'dbeen handed something of which
(06:30):
there was barely any researchand there was this huge, open
sort of hole that had not muchin it that I could find.
So I really was starting.
I remember creating an imagefor a slideshow of me standing
at the bottom of a mountain,staring up at it and just going
(06:51):
where do I start?
And so there was a couple ofpapers which we'll mention in
the paper that we're writing.
That kind of started me down thetrack, and one was a paper by
Eloise Gillings, which she'ddone a PhD.
She's a lecturer at Massey andis Maori, and she'd looked at
the sort of access to veterinaryeducation for Maori and some of
(07:14):
the issues around that.
So that was quantitative study.
So she was looking at thenumbers of Maori coming into the
student cohort and thenstarting to look at their
background like the decile ofthe school, they went to their
family of origin in terms of hadanyone else gone to university
from their family and startingto look at the layers in which,
(07:35):
you know, things were differentfor the Māori students often
compared to the maybe the NewZealand European students.
So I read that paper and then Ialso started to delve into the
human world Maori and humanhealth and there's a world of
literature out there that hasbeen written for decades and in
(07:58):
education, but unfortunately inthe veterinary sector we just
have almost none.
So it was yeah, I guess I'llstop the answer there in terms
of it's been a huge journey totry and untangle and to think
about what are the things wewant to be exploring here, or
what you know, where are thegaps, where are the crossovers,
(08:19):
where are the connections?
And that eventually led on tothe project which we're doing
now.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You're a veterinarian yourself, or you trained as a
veterinarian and you mentioned,so you're a scientist, right?
You mentioned qualitative andquantitative just now.
Research.
Was it hard for you to changeyour thinking from quantitative
(08:50):
to qualitative?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The answer to that question is probably no, because
while I am a scientist, I feellike I probably am more.
The arts probably has my heart,maybe more.
So I've been an artist inscience clothing maybe for a
long time.
I'm still a vet and I love thescience, I think, but I just
(09:18):
love talking to people and Ithink qualitative is.
You know, I know that a lot ofscientists find it wishy-washy,
but when you get people talkingabout you know their actual
stories and their actualthoughts or experiences or
feelings like it's incrediblyrich and powerful data, data and
(09:41):
actually some of thequantitative data you know.
I suppose for me and mypersonality sometimes there's an
element of I just I've become,it's become less interesting to
me as I've got older.
I think it really really,really interested my brain when
I was, you know, maybe youngerand maybe this is a stage of
life thing.
It's like you start to standback from it all and go well,
(10:04):
what does it all mean?
And the numbers mean less to menow and the stories mean a lot
more.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Why do you think that ?
I guess you've sort of answeredit, but just in case there's a
little bit more there why do youthink that qualitative research
was the way to go for you withthis topic?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
to go for you with this topic.
I think what we needed to hear.
And what we need to hear issort of much richer information
than numbers.
And when you ask questions youknow if you ask a specific
question to get a specificquantitative kind of answer that
you can put in a box, you'rejust going to get one layer of
(10:45):
information.
But when you ask an open-endedquestion, you get all these
nuances and these kind of themesand stories which feed into
whole sort of ideas and imageswhich would be very difficult to
get with quantitative research,because I think a lot of the
time with quantitative researchpeople end up asking questions
(11:06):
which are not the best questionsto ask when they're trying to
dig out numbers.
You know, while that and theywork together and you know you
can't, you can't have onewithout the other.
Like Eloise Gillings PhD thesisis so useful, you know to have
to have some, some backgrounddata, but then I find the
introduction and the discussionfar more interesting than the
(11:29):
actual numbers for me.
But you need those numbers totalk to.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
In your discussions.
What did you learn, discoverand or?
My question here is whatsurprises did you come across,
if any?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I think it's all.
It's all new information to me,like in many ways or not.
Yeah, not not all of it.
I think it's really interestingto hear what it feels like to
be Maori in the, in the sector,to be in that, in that body and
in that life experience.
And I guess you find thingsthat you've been blind to
(12:10):
because I'm New Zealand European, I've grown up in a New Zealand
European world, and you juststart to have your eyes open to
things that you've never seenbefore or never heard before,
and we can only find that out byasking these people.
So that's surprising I wouldn'tnecessarily use the word
surprise Fascinating maybe,sometimes very moving, sometimes
(12:37):
upsetting, sometimes reallyenlightening.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, I don't know whether you'll be able to answer
this because of privacy,privacy conditions.
Are you able to give examplesof what you're talking about
here?
You just said that you kind ofdidn't know what it was or had.
(13:03):
No, what word did you use?
Surprise?
Was my word Enlightening?
That what it's like being Maoriwhen you're a European?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I think you can be aware of judgments and
assumptions people are makingaround you that they might not
even be aware that they'remaking, but you are more acutely
attuned to them because they'rehitting you personally.
So, whether it's an assumptionor a judgment about a client
(13:41):
who's coming in, or whether it'sabout Māori in general, or
whether it's an opinion aboutsome aspect of society, those
things, when they're voiced byeither your colleagues or your
clients or whatever, they'refelt more keenly because they're
affecting you directly.
And a lot of that goes unseen.
(14:02):
It just is, it's underneath thesurface.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Are we talking?
I don't want to put words inyour mouth.
Are we talking unconsciouscognitive biases or prejudices
here?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely In so many different
ways.
Like you know, we talked about,for instance, just something as
simple as using te reo inconsults or in the context of a
clinic or whatever.
Like it's not used in barely inNew Zealand, it's never heard.
I've never worked in a clinicwhere I've heard it being used
(14:37):
and it's not so it's not at allnormalized, so it's not at all
normalized.
And then people talk about youknow how sort of both sides of
it.
Like they talk about the joythat they see on the faces of
the people that they use it withwhen it means something to them
, and they also talk about thatkind of that little subtle body
language or vibe that's givenoff when it's used for someone
(14:59):
who doesn't want to hear it, youknow, and both of those things
are felt and seen, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I've got two questions.
Are you fluent in Te Reo now orwere you when you started?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I am not fluent in Te Reo.
That's another whole story.
I'm level just finished levelfive, embarrassingly.
I'd like to be a lot morefluent than I am and I never
will be.
That's a lifelong journey.
When I started I was level one,so that as a side part of my
(15:35):
research has been an enormousjourney and a huge bit of work
personally to have been on and ahuge bit of work personally to
have been on.
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Now let's get back to today'sshow.
(16:54):
Getting back to your researchas a veterinarian, how?
Which is animals?
How does this research tie inwith or connect with animals?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's funny because when I started doing this
research, way back in theliterature review stage of
things, and I started to thinkabout what this meant for me,
I've done a lot of standing backand thinking about this and one
of the things that one of thequotes that came from the
research with the clientexperiences so not Māori
research was you know, somebodysaid every person is attached to
(17:33):
their animal.
I suppose this is within asmall animal, as in, every
animal has a person attached toit, and you could say that about
all the animals in New Zealand.
Like the native animals don'thave people attached, but they
have people who have beenassigned to be guardians of the
native animals.
All the farm animals havepeople who either own them and
(17:55):
control them, and all of thesmall animals do as well.
So what those people believe,or who they are, or their values
that they hold, all of thoseare so acutely tied up with how
those animals will eventually becared for or treated or looked
(18:17):
after, right?
So, yeah, it blew me away alittle bit when I first started
standing back from this andthinking that when I read
through the code of conduct, forinstance, for veterinarians,
and there's just this hugeamount of emphasis on welfare of
the individual animal.
And you know, we, we focus onall these, even our laws, like
(18:40):
the animal welfare act orwhatever the the legal side of
things is all around theprotection of animals and yet
there there just doesn't.
There seems to be this gapbetween this connection, between
the fact that you have to bringthose, those people have to be
on board, you have to to buildtrust and care for the people in
(19:01):
order to care for their animals, because they're not going to
sign up for whatever you'resuggesting unless you have that
relationship with them.
So to me it's a little bit of asegue, I suppose.
But Maori, their view of animals, for some of them will be quite
different from ours and I andours, ours and ours and theirs
(19:23):
is a dumb way of putting it,because everybody has a
different version of you knowwhat they believe.
But you know it's important togo back to some of the
understandings of Māori andanimals.
And you know, I think there'sanother paper that I read early
on which was a master's thesis,which was looking at animal
welfare and Māori and trying toexplore some of those themes,
(19:46):
and that had a great deal ofunpacking for some of the things
that I then went on to read alot more about, but that was
about models of welfare that wehold in New Zealand, you know,
in European kind of thinking,and then trying to interview
Māori and understand that better.
And I guess the bottom line outof that paper was that, you know
(20:09):
, some of the thinking thatwe've built our legislation
around and our thinking aroundis very much European influenced
.
It's not indigenous thinkingand there are other ways of
thinking about welfare that wejust don't happen to hold the
only way of thinking about thisand as humans we seem to have to
(20:29):
learn this over and over again.
But it's really strongly heldon to this kind of belief that
we hold all the right and sacredand, you know, correct ways of
seeing the world and thinkingabout the world.
But Māori have quite differentways of seeing and understanding
animals and the world and it'sreally important for our
(20:52):
veterinary sector to really diginto that and to understand that
and it will enrich the way wethink about it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Absolutely.
One of the you were talkingjust now and one of the things
that came to mind related toresearch that Francesca did
about what clients want, and I'mnot sure whether the research
that you've mentioned just nowis further research than what
she and I were talking aboutwhen she appeared on the show a
(21:22):
couple of years back, but shesaid that this is me
paraphrasing on my memory ofwhat I thought I heard her say
was that one of the things thatclients want when and this is
companion animals when they comeinto the clinic is that the
nurse, the receptionist, the vetknows that animal, that it's
(21:47):
all about the animal's name, theanimal as an individual, rather
than the person holding thecage or the reins that happens
to have the checkbook as well.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, and I would say one of the things I've a
comment I'd make about that inregards to Māori is that that's
maybe you know, for someindividual people that's going
to be exactly the same.
They really would love you toknow their animal well.
But also there's the widerconsiderations of the whānau,
(22:23):
the context of where the animalcomes from.
If that animal is an extendedmember of their whānau, then
it's not just about the verysort of individualistic way of
looking at things that we have.
So I sort of feel like they'rebetter at looking at the whole
situation, the whole wider viewof health, rather than the
(22:45):
individual pussycat that has aspecific problem.
You know, like maybe that'sbeing a bit idealistic, but
that's my impression.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Jane, what other or any research has been done in
relation to Māori and veterinaryscience in New Zealand?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, unfortunately almost none, as far as I can
work out Like, if you do, I'mgoing to refer to these papers
in my research.
But there was kind of threepapers that kind of show up.
One is the PhD I've talkedabout by Eloise Gillings,
another is a master's thesisabout welfare and animals and
(23:30):
Māori and that was by JordanWoodhouse.
And the third paper is justlike a tiny little paper where
they explore one of thepolytechs in Auckland explored
introducing Māori tikanga inrelation to animal euthanasia,
and that's just literally a tinylittle paper.
But that as far as I can tell,unless you start heading into
(23:51):
all the human health side ofthings and I'm hopefully not
going to offend anyone by sayingthis, but as far as I can tell,
that's about it.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Do you know whether there has been research in other
countries, veterinary scienceand their indigenous people I'm
thinking Australia Aborigines,I'm thinking North America and
the Native American Indians.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's a good question.
The only thing I'm just off thetop of my head, the only thing
which I referred to in the firstbit of research I did, so it
probably won't be referred to inthis paper was the Sydney
School of Veterinary Medicine, Ithink, introduced as part of
their program looking intoAboriginal ways of seeing, and
they had I can't again rememberoff the top of their programme
looking into Aboriginal ways ofseeing, and they had I can't
(24:44):
again remember off the top of myhead but this was a few years
ago.
They introduced it and they hadthe veterinary students going
out to like sort of I don't knowsmoking ceremonies and dancing
and they met with theseAboriginal elders and they heard
stories about animals and soit's a start.
But I don't know about researchas such, but I know that they
(25:08):
made a point of incorporatingthat into their programme, which
seems like a bit of a firstfrom what I can tell from around
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Jane, how did you do the research?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So we used a technique called a snowballing
technique, whereby we had acouple of contacts in the sector
and we put the word out onFacebook and one person led to
another, all through word ofmouth, so it was mainly through
word of mouth.
We tracked people down.
We've interviewed 13 Maori vetnurses and vets in total.
(25:43):
Some of them are still workingin the sector and some of them
have left.
I conducted interviews withthem and we had sort of four
questions.
We asked them about theirjourney into the profession, so
their educational journey, andwe're going to hopefully write
another paper detailing theeducation side of things.
(26:04):
We asked about Te Tiriti and theveterinary world and what their
experience was, what theirthinking was about that.
We asked about in terms of theculture of veterinary practice.
Did they feel culturally safeand what stories or observations
did they have to inform thosethoughts and about any
(26:26):
opportunities they could see inthe sector in regards to that.
And then we asked about theirobservations or stories
regarding Maori clients, likewhat had they observed about the
experiences of Maori clients inthe sector.
And so each interview lastedabout an hour.
The longest one I did was thefirst one, which was an epic
interview, fascinating, but itwas two hours.
(26:48):
I felt like I'd been given ataonga at the end and all of
them were.
It was so cool to do.
I've obviously listened to themmany times because we had to
transcribe them and eachinterview has all these
incredible little nuggets in itas well.
And then from there we'vetranscribed the interviews, then
(27:10):
we've kind of read through andkind of worked out the themes,
the major themes which havetaken some kind of condensing,
and now we're in the process ofwriting up the paper.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
What was without?
If you can answer withoutgiving away breaking privacy,
what was the age range?
The reason I'm asking thatquestion is because did you
notice differences, generationaldifferences?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , so we had.
I think we the vet nurses areoften usually younger, I guess.
So, yeah, we had probably early20s to as maybe as old, as you
know, late 60s.
It's a big age range.
I think the differences arealmost more about New Zealand
history, like, if I stand backand think about it, I think you
(28:01):
know you've got a.
What has happened for Māoriover the last kind of, say, 60
years is really reflected in thestories of those participants.
For instance, many of the olderparticipants had lost their
language because their parentshad been punished for speaking
(28:23):
it, so it was lost from theirwhānau altogether, and the
education experiences werecompletely different as well.
They were pushed away fromprofessions and into trades,
which is just the story of NewZealand.
It's not especially aveterinary story.
It's the story of New Zealand.
It's not especially aveterinary story.
It's the story of our history.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
What big themes came out of the research.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I think, the big things we're going to talk about
in the paper.
The first theme is thevisibility of Māori.
So for a start, there arehardly any Māori in the
profession, which isn'tnecessarily a theme because
that's something we already know.
But even the people that arethere, as you and I know, māori
people come in all shapes andforms.
(29:11):
They don't look Māorinecessarily.
So people can strongly identifyas Māori and they are Māori,
maori, but they might look tosomeone else, as though they're
just New Zealand European.
So for a lot of people beingunseen as Maori is quite tricky.
So they're not acknowledged orthey don't feel like they can
(29:33):
show up as Maori in theprofession.
They feel like they're showingup with the assumption that they
kind of have a New ZealandEuropean Pākehā view of the
world and not understood ashaving an entire sort of world
or background in behind themwhich is quite different to the
world that they're working in.
And that also was a littletricky for some of them when
(29:56):
they would have this racist orunconscious bias or assumptions
or stereotypes made about Māoriaround them, apparently without
understanding or acknowledgementthat they were Māori.
So they're seeing that andfeeling that, even though to the
people who are doing it.
They're not realising that it'simpacting them.
(30:16):
I suppose another theme was wetalked about the absence of te
ao Māori in the profession.
So we don't have, we have very,very little use of te reo, like
even tokenism, like we don'thave it spoken, we don't have it
barely in signage.
It's not like your classic.
I'm not saying the medicalprofession are doing it any
(30:38):
better, necessarily, but likeit's quite normal now to go into
a space and find a lot ofthings written in te reo as well
as English.
We're not hearing it, we're notusing it, it's not normalized
as a way of greeting someone orMaori words being used in a
consultation.
And then tikanga was another bigthing around.
(30:59):
So tikanga, I think, is a goodway of thinking about it, for
Pākehā is like the safe orappropriate thing at the right
time and setting.
So if we're going to think oftikanga from a New Zealand,
european way of thinking aboutit, it might be well.
When you go to have dinner atsomeone's house, you use a knife
(31:19):
and fork and you thank the cookat the end of the meal.
When you go into someone'shouse, if you've got dirty shoes
, you take them off.
You know there's all thesethings that we just do in
everyday life, which are tikanga, which we have little ways in
which we organise our societyand the way we do things that
keep us kind of feeling safe andcomfortable.
Well, for Māori, tikanga issomething that is built into
(31:43):
their ancient ways of being, butit's also being new and
developed in different settings,and in the Māori sorry, in the
veterinary world we have almostI would say almost like a
(32:05):
complete absence of anyacknowledgement of Māori tikanga
in regards to things that we door services we provide.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I hope you found what Dr Jane and I have been talking
about interesting.
Remember to tune in next weekwhere Dr Jane goes into the
different steps that clinics cantake to help ensure that
tikanga doing the right thing inthe right way at the right time
can happen in your clinic.
(32:32):
This is Julie South signing offand inviting you to go out
there and be your mostfantabulous self Until next week
.
Thank you for listening.
Ka kite anō.
How would you describe yourself?
Companion animal veterinarianDr Jane Jones describes herself
as an artist in scientist'sclothing, and it's this passion
for wanting to explore beyondthe absolute numbers and putting
things into boxes that I'm sureyou'll pick up on today as we
(00:30):
talk, as Dr Jane and I talkabout her qualitative research
entitled Experiences of MaoriVeterinarians and Veterinary
Nurses in the VeterinaryProfession in Ōtiroa a narrative
inquiry.
She's doing that with DrFrancesca Brown of Ōtaigo
Polytech.
(00:50):
Welcome to Veterinary Voices.
This is episode 213, and I'myour host, Julie South.
With listeners tuning in fromover 1, 1400 cities worldwide,
(01:10):
Veterinary Voices celebrates allthat's great about working in
New Zealand's veterinaryindustry.
I'd love to hear where you'relistening from right now, so
please feel free to share yourlocation with me at
veterinaryvoicesnz.
It's also atveterinarianvoicesnz where you
can find back copies as well.
Veterinary Voices is brought toyou by VetStaff, New Zealand's
(01:32):
only recruitment agencyspecialising in helping
veterinary professionals findjobs.
They're excited about going toon Monday mornings in Kiwi vet
clinics, Vetstaffconz.
Dr Jane Jones is a companionanimal veterinarian based in
(01:56):
Otahi, Christchurch, Otiroa, NewZealand.
Dr Jane started out as a mixedpractice veterinarian in
Southland and, despite beingborn in the North Island, has
spent most of her working lifein the South Island In small
animal practice.
Dr Jane has an interest indermatology, Learning Te Reo
(02:17):
over the last three years foroverseas listeners Te Reo is
conversational Maori has been abig journey for Jane.
She's just completed level fiveof eight levels and has
contributed to a growingcuriosity and interest in Te Ao
Māori.
What is Te Ao Māori?
(02:38):
Well, Te Ao Māori is the Māoriworldview.
This includes the culture, thelanguage and the social and
political structures of theMaori people of Aotearoa, New
Zealand.
It's a holistic perspectivethat's strong on the
interconnectedness of all livingand non-living things and the
(03:00):
importance of relationshipsbetween people and nature.
Associated with Dr Jane'sjourney has been a move into the
research space, which is whatwe are chatting about today.
She's currently writing up apaper of qualitative research
entitled, as I said earlier,Experiences of Maori
Veterinarians and VeterinaryNurses in the Veterinary
(03:22):
Profinary profession in Aotearoaa narrative inquiry and she's
doing that with AssociateProfessor Dr Francesca Brown of
Otago Polytech.
In her spare time, Dr Janetells me she loves a robust,
meandering reflection, throwingpoems out to the world, moving,
which includes biking, running,skiing, dancing and tramping,
(03:46):
facilitating creative writing inprison, smelling harakiki
flowers, drinking coffee,singing harmonies and reading
beautifully written books.
She wonders whether sheprobably asks too many hard
questions, but that depends.
We kick off this first part ofDr Jane's and my chat where I
(04:08):
ask her where she started withher research.
Where did you start with thisresearch?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Oh, that's it.
It feels about three years agoI knew Francesca from vet school
and she has been teaching vetnursing for many years at Otago
Poly and the school of OtagoPolytech had been awarded a
Staff Excellence Award for theimplementation of a Māori
(04:42):
strategic framework and thatcame with a grant.
And I had, after a randomconversation with Francesca,
been working with her on anotherpaper.
It was about client experienceswith the veterinary profession
or veterinary sector, and we'reabout to have that paper
published, so it's called ClientExperiences with Veterinary
(05:03):
Professionals and that was anarrative inquiry study where we
interviewed clients about theirexperiences and I'd really
enjoyed doing that research.
I found that I really enjoyedtalking to people and Francesca
said to me well, would you liketo be, would you like to be
involved in this next bit ofresearch on and it had a big
(05:24):
long title Matauranga, māori andthe Veterinary Sector, and I
thought no.
My first thought was I'm notthe right person for that.
I'm not Māori, I'm not theright person.
But at the same time I was juststarting to learn te reo and I
(05:45):
was just starting on this veryearly journey, sort of taking
some steps away from my normalsort of veterinary practice and
starting to become moreinterested and over time, as I
started to learn more about thelanguage, I started to think
well, actually I would be reallyinterested to do this, I'd be
really interested in starting tothink about this space.
(06:07):
So we started with this body ofresearch that I was responsible
for, which was basically like aliterature search on what was
out there already in terms ofMāori and the veterinary sector
and where those thingsintersected.
What I didn't know was that I'dbeen handed something of which
(06:30):
there was barely any researchand there was this huge, open
sort of hole that had not muchin it that I could find.
So I really was starting.
I remember creating an imagefor a slideshow of me standing
at the bottom of a mountain,staring up at it and just going
(06:51):
where do I start?
And so there was a couple ofpapers which we'll mention in
the paper that we're writing.
That kind of started me down thetrack, and one was a paper by
Eloise Gillings, which she'ddone a PhD.
She's a lecturer at Massey andis Maori, and she'd looked at
the sort of access to veterinaryeducation for Maori and some of
(07:14):
the issues around that.
So that was quantitative study.
So she was looking at thenumbers of Maori coming into the
student cohort and thenstarting to look at their
background like the decile ofthe school, they went to their
family of origin in terms of hadanyone else gone to university
from their family and startingto look at the layers in which,
(07:35):
you know, things were differentfor the Māori students often
compared to the maybe the NewZealand European students.
So I read that paper and then Ialso started to delve into the
human world Maori and humanhealth and there's a world of
literature out there that hasbeen written for decades and in
(07:58):
education, but unfortunately inthe veterinary sector we just
have almost none.
So it was yeah, I guess I'llstop the answer there in terms
of it's been a huge journey totry and untangle and to think
about what are the things wewant to be exploring here, or
what you know, where are thegaps, where are the crossovers,
(08:19):
where are the connections?
And that eventually led on tothe project which we're doing
now.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You're a veterinarian yourself, or you trained as a
veterinarian and you mentioned,so you're a scientist, right?
You mentioned qualitative andquantitative just now.
Research.
Was it hard for you to changeyour thinking from quantitative
(08:50):
to qualitative?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
The answer to that question is probably no, because
while I am a scientist, I feellike I probably am more.
The arts probably has my heart,maybe more.
So I've been an artist inscience clothing maybe for a
long time.
I'm still a vet and I love thescience, I think, but I just
(09:18):
love talking to people and Ithink qualitative is.
You know, I know that a lot ofscientists find it wishy-washy,
but when you get people talkingabout you know their actual
stories and their actualthoughts or experiences or
feelings like it's incrediblyrich and powerful data, data and
(09:41):
actually some of thequantitative data you know.
I suppose for me and mypersonality sometimes there's an
element of I just I've become,it's become less interesting to
me as I've got older.
I think it really really,really interested my brain when
I was, you know, maybe youngerand maybe this is a stage of
life thing.
It's like you start to standback from it all and go well,
(10:04):
what does it all mean?
And the numbers mean less to menow and the stories mean a lot
more.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Why do you think that ?
I guess you've sort of answeredit, but just in case there's a
little bit more there why do youthink that qualitative research
was the way to go for you withthis topic?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
to go for you with this topic.
I think what we needed to hear.
And what we need to hear issort of much richer information
than numbers.
And when you ask questions youknow if you ask a specific
question to get a specificquantitative kind of answer that
you can put in a box, you'rejust going to get one layer of
(10:45):
information.
But when you ask an open-endedquestion, you get all these
nuances and these kind of themesand stories which feed into
whole sort of ideas and imageswhich would be very difficult to
get with quantitative research,because I think a lot of the
time with quantitative researchpeople end up asking questions
(11:06):
which are not the best questionsto ask when they're trying to
dig out numbers.
You know, while that and theywork together and you know you
can't, you can't have onewithout the other.
Like Eloise Gillings PhD thesisis so useful, you know to have
to have some, some backgrounddata, but then I find the
introduction and the discussionfar more interesting than the
(11:29):
actual numbers for me.
But you need those numbers totalk to.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
In your discussions.
What did you learn, discoverand or?
My question here is whatsurprises did you come across,
if any?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I think it's all.
It's all new information to me,like in many ways or not.
Yeah, not not all of it.
I think it's really interestingto hear what it feels like to
be Maori in the, in the sector,to be in that, in that body and
in that life experience.
And I guess you find thingsthat you've been blind to
(12:10):
because I'm New Zealand European, I've grown up in a New Zealand
European world, and you juststart to have your eyes open to
things that you've never seenbefore or never heard before,
and we can only find that out byasking these people.
So that's surprising I wouldn'tnecessarily use the word
surprise Fascinating maybe,sometimes very moving, sometimes
(12:37):
upsetting, sometimes reallyenlightening.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah, I don't know whether you'll be able to answer
this because of privacy,privacy conditions.
Are you able to give examplesof what you're talking about
here?
You just said that you kind ofdidn't know what it was or had.
(13:03):
No, what word did you use?
Surprise?
Was my word Enlightening?
That what it's like being Maoriwhen you're a European?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I think you can be aware of judgments and
assumptions people are makingaround you that they might not
even be aware that they'remaking, but you are more acutely
attuned to them because they'rehitting you personally.
So, whether it's an assumptionor a judgment about a client
(13:41):
who's coming in, or whether it'sabout Māori in general, or
whether it's an opinion aboutsome aspect of society, those
things, when they're voiced byeither your colleagues or your
clients or whatever, they'refelt more keenly because they're
affecting you directly.
And a lot of that goes unseen.
(14:02):
It just is, it's underneath thesurface.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Are we talking?
I don't want to put words inyour mouth.
Are we talking unconsciouscognitive biases or prejudices
here?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely In so many different
ways.
Like you know, we talked about,for instance, just something as
simple as using te reo inconsults or in the context of a
clinic or whatever.
Like it's not used in barely inNew Zealand, it's never heard.
I've never worked in a clinicwhere I've heard it being used
(14:37):
and it's not so it's not at allnormalized, so it's not at all
normalized.
And then people talk about youknow how sort of both sides of
it.
Like they talk about the joythat they see on the faces of
the people that they use it withwhen it means something to them
, and they also talk about thatkind of that little subtle body
language or vibe that's givenoff when it's used for someone
(14:59):
who doesn't want to hear it, youknow, and both of those things
are felt and seen, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
I've got two questions.
Are you fluent in Te Reo now orwere you when you started?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
I am not fluent in Te Reo.
That's another whole story.
I'm level just finished levelfive, embarrassingly.
I'd like to be a lot morefluent than I am and I never
will be.
That's a lifelong journey.
When I started I was level one,so that as a side part of my
(15:35):
research has been an enormousjourney and a huge bit of work
personally to have been on and ahuge bit of work personally to
have been on.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I just want to interrupt this chat for a very
brief moment to share somethingimportant for clinics that are
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(16:10):
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(16:33):
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Now let's get back to today'sshow.
(16:54):
Getting back to your researchas a veterinarian, how?
Which is animals?
How does this research tie inwith or connect with animals?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's funny because when I started doing this
research, way back in theliterature review stage of
things, and I started to thinkabout what this meant for me,
I've done a lot of standing backand thinking about this and one
of the things that one of thequotes that came from the
research with the clientexperiences so not Māori
research was you know, somebodysaid every person is attached to
(17:33):
their animal.
I suppose this is within asmall animal, as in, every
animal has a person attached toit, and you could say that about
all the animals in New Zealand.
Like the native animals don'thave people attached, but they
have people who have beenassigned to be guardians of the
native animals.
All the farm animals havepeople who either own them and
(17:55):
control them, and all of thesmall animals do as well.
So what those people believe,or who they are, or their values
that they hold, all of thoseare so acutely tied up with how
those animals will eventually becared for or treated or looked
(18:17):
after, right?
So, yeah, it blew me away alittle bit when I first started
standing back from this andthinking that when I read
through the code of conduct, forinstance, for veterinarians,
and there's just this hugeamount of emphasis on welfare of
the individual animal.
And you know, we, we focus onall these, even our laws, like
(18:40):
the animal welfare act orwhatever the the legal side of
things is all around theprotection of animals and yet
there there just doesn't.
There seems to be this gapbetween this connection, between
the fact that you have to bringthose, those people have to be
on board, you have to to buildtrust and care for the people in
(19:01):
order to care for their animals, because they're not going to
sign up for whatever you'resuggesting unless you have that
relationship with them.
So to me it's a little bit of asegue, I suppose.
But Maori, their view of animals, for some of them will be quite
different from ours and I andours, ours and ours and theirs
(19:23):
is a dumb way of putting it,because everybody has a
different version of you knowwhat they believe.
But you know it's important togo back to some of the
understandings of Māori andanimals.
And you know, I think there'sanother paper that I read early
on which was a master's thesis,which was looking at animal
welfare and Māori and trying toexplore some of those themes,
(19:46):
and that had a great deal ofunpacking for some of the things
that I then went on to read alot more about, but that was
about models of welfare that wehold in New Zealand, you know,
in European kind of thinking,and then trying to interview
Māori and understand that better.
And I guess the bottom line outof that paper was that, you know
(20:09):
, some of the thinking thatwe've built our legislation
around and our thinking aroundis very much European influenced
.
It's not indigenous thinkingand there are other ways of
thinking about welfare that wejust don't happen to hold the
only way of thinking about thisand as humans we seem to have to
(20:29):
learn this over and over again.
But it's really strongly heldon to this kind of belief that
we hold all the right and sacredand, you know, correct ways of
seeing the world and thinkingabout the world.
But Māori have quite differentways of seeing and understanding
animals and the world and it'sreally important for our
(20:52):
veterinary sector to really diginto that and to understand that
and it will enrich the way wethink about it as well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Absolutely.
One of the you were talkingjust now and one of the things
that came to mind related toresearch that Francesca did
about what clients want, and I'mnot sure whether the research
that you've mentioned just nowis further research than what
she and I were talking aboutwhen she appeared on the show a
(21:22):
couple of years back, but shesaid that this is me
paraphrasing on my memory ofwhat I thought I heard her say
was that one of the things thatclients want when and this is
companion animals when they comeinto the clinic is that the
nurse, the receptionist, the vetknows that animal, that it's
(21:47):
all about the animal's name, theanimal as an individual, rather
than the person holding thecage or the reins that happens
to have the checkbook as well.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, and I would say one of the things I've a
comment I'd make about that inregards to Māori is that that's
maybe you know, for someindividual people that's going
to be exactly the same.
They really would love you toknow their animal well.
But also there's the widerconsiderations of the whānau,
(22:23):
the context of where the animalcomes from.
If that animal is an extendedmember of their whānau, then
it's not just about the verysort of individualistic way of
looking at things that we have.
So I sort of feel like they'rebetter at looking at the whole
situation, the whole wider viewof health, rather than the
(22:45):
individual pussycat that has aspecific problem.
You know, like maybe that'sbeing a bit idealistic, but
that's my impression.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Jane, what other or any research has been done in
relation to Māori and veterinaryscience in New Zealand?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Well, unfortunately almost none, as far as I can
work out Like, if you do, I'mgoing to refer to these papers
in my research.
But there was kind of threepapers that kind of show up.
One is the PhD I've talkedabout by Eloise Gillings,
another is a master's thesisabout welfare and animals and
(23:30):
Māori and that was by JordanWoodhouse.
And the third paper is justlike a tiny little paper where
they explore one of thepolytechs in Auckland explored
introducing Māori tikanga inrelation to animal euthanasia,
and that's just literally a tinylittle paper.
But that as far as I can tell,unless you start heading into
(23:51):
all the human health side ofthings and I'm hopefully not
going to offend anyone by sayingthis, but as far as I can tell,
that's about it.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Do you know whether there has been research in other
countries, veterinary scienceand their indigenous people I'm
thinking Australia Aborigines,I'm thinking North America and
the Native American Indians.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's a good question.
The only thing I'm just off thetop of my head, the only thing
which I referred to in the firstbit of research I did, so it
probably won't be referred to inthis paper was the Sydney
School of Veterinary Medicine, Ithink, introduced as part of
their program looking intoAboriginal ways of seeing, and
they had I can't again rememberoff the top of their programme
looking into Aboriginal ways ofseeing, and they had I can't
(24:44):
again remember off the top of myhead but this was a few years
ago.
They introduced it and they hadthe veterinary students going
out to like sort of I don't knowsmoking ceremonies and dancing
and they met with theseAboriginal elders and they heard
stories about animals and soit's a start.
But I don't know about researchas such, but I know that they
(25:08):
made a point of incorporatingthat into their programme, which
seems like a bit of a firstfrom what I can tell from around
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Jane, how did you do the research?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
So we used a technique called a snowballing
technique, whereby we had acouple of contacts in the sector
and we put the word out onFacebook and one person led to
another, all through word ofmouth, so it was mainly through
word of mouth.
We tracked people down.
We've interviewed 13 Maori vetnurses and vets in total.
(25:43):
Some of them are still workingin the sector and some of them
have left.
I conducted interviews withthem and we had sort of four
questions.
We asked them about theirjourney into the profession, so
their educational journey, andwe're going to hopefully write
another paper detailing theeducation side of things.
(26:04):
We asked about Te Tiriti and theveterinary world and what their
experience was, what theirthinking was about that.
We asked about in terms of theculture of veterinary practice.
Did they feel culturally safeand what stories or observations
did they have to inform thosethoughts and about any
(26:26):
opportunities they could see inthe sector in regards to that.
And then we asked about theirobservations or stories
regarding Maori clients, likewhat had they observed about the
experiences of Maori clients inthe sector.
And so each interview lastedabout an hour.
The longest one I did was thefirst one, which was an epic
interview, fascinating, but itwas two hours.
(26:48):
I felt like I'd been given ataonga at the end and all of
them were.
It was so cool to do.
I've obviously listened to themmany times because we had to
transcribe them and eachinterview has all these
incredible little nuggets in itas well.
And then from there we'vetranscribed the interviews, then
(27:10):
we've kind of read through andkind of worked out the themes,
the major themes which havetaken some kind of condensing,
and now we're in the process ofwriting up the paper.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
What was without?
If you can answer withoutgiving away breaking privacy,
what was the age range?
The reason I'm asking thatquestion is because did you
notice differences, generationaldifferences?
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Yeah, absolutely yeah , so we had.
I think we the vet nurses areoften usually younger, I guess.
So, yeah, we had probably early20s to as maybe as old, as you
know, late 60s.
It's a big age range.
I think the differences arealmost more about New Zealand
history, like, if I stand backand think about it, I think you
(28:01):
know you've got a.
What has happened for Māoriover the last kind of, say, 60
years is really reflected in thestories of those participants.
For instance, many of the olderparticipants had lost their
language because their parentshad been punished for speaking
(28:23):
it, so it was lost from theirwhānau altogether, and the
education experiences werecompletely different as well.
They were pushed away fromprofessions and into trades,
which is just the story of NewZealand.
It's not especially aveterinary story.
It's the story of New Zealand.
It's not especially aveterinary story.
It's the story of our history.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
What big themes came out of the research.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I think, the big things we're going to talk about
in the paper.
The first theme is thevisibility of Māori.
So for a start, there arehardly any Māori in the
profession, which isn'tnecessarily a theme because
that's something we already know.
But even the people that arethere, as you and I know, māori
people come in all shapes andforms.
(29:11):
They don't look Māorinecessarily.
So people can strongly identifyas Māori and they are Māori,
maori, but they might look tosomeone else, as though they're
just New Zealand European.
So for a lot of people beingunseen as Maori is quite tricky.
So they're not acknowledged orthey don't feel like they can
(29:33):
show up as Maori in theprofession.
They feel like they're showingup with the assumption that they
kind of have a New ZealandEuropean Pākehā view of the
world and not understood ashaving an entire sort of world
or background in behind themwhich is quite different to the
world that they're working in.
And that also was a littletricky for some of them when
(29:56):
they would have this racist orunconscious bias or assumptions
or stereotypes made about Māoriaround them, apparently without
understanding or acknowledgementthat they were Māori.
So they're seeing that andfeeling that, even though to the
people who are doing it.
They're not realising that it'simpacting them.
(30:16):
I suppose another theme was wetalked about the absence of te
ao Māori in the profession.
So we don't have, we have very,very little use of te reo, like
even tokenism, like we don'thave it spoken, we don't have it
barely in signage.
It's not like your classic.
I'm not saying the medicalprofession are doing it any
(30:38):
better, necessarily, but likeit's quite normal now to go into
a space and find a lot ofthings written in te reo as well
as English.
We're not hearing it, we're notusing it, it's not normalized
as a way of greeting someone orMaori words being used in a
consultation.
And then tikanga was another bigthing around.
(30:59):
So tikanga, I think, is a goodway of thinking about it, for
Pākehā is like the safe orappropriate thing at the right
time and setting.
So if we're going to think oftikanga from a New Zealand,
european way of thinking aboutit, it might be well.
When you go to have dinner atsomeone's house, you use a knife
(31:19):
and fork and you thank the cookat the end of the meal.
When you go into someone'shouse, if you've got dirty shoes
, you take them off.
You know there's all thesethings that we just do in
everyday life, which are tikanga, which we have little ways in
which we organise our societyand the way we do things that
keep us kind of feeling safe andcomfortable.
Well, for Māori, tikanga issomething that is built into
(31:43):
their ancient ways of being, butit's also being new and
developed in different settings,and in the Māori sorry, in the
veterinary world we have almostI would say almost like a
(32:05):
complete absence of anyacknowledgement of Māori tikanga
in regards to things that we door services we provide.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I hope you found what Dr Jane and I have been talking
about interesting.
Remember to tune in next weekwhere Dr Jane goes into the
different steps that clinics cantake to help ensure that
tikanga doing the right thing inthe right way at the right time
can happen in your clinic.
(32:32):
This is Julie South signing offand inviting you to go out
there and be your mostfantabulous self Until next week
.
Thank you for listening.
Ka kite anō.
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