Short Film: A visit to Waikato
Marking the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples
In the days after the 21st WONCA World Rural Health Conference closed in Wellington, WONCA President Prof Viviana Martinez-Bianchi was invited home by Kaumātua Russell Riki to his rural community in Whāingaroa (Raglan), Aotearoa New Zealand. Russell had guided delegates through the conference as a cultural adviser, holding the tikanga (protocol) that shaped the week. Here, on his own whenua, he opened his home, his river and his history.
The result is a short film about listening.
Watch the film (approximately 11 minutes):
If the video does not display, watch it at youtu.be/tFsMz7RiCRE.
Russell is clear about the barriers his community faces.
These barriers are not accidents of geography. They are the result of decades of health policy and funding decisions made without meaningful rural engagement, and, for Māori, of the enduring effects of colonisation. As the Aotearoa New Zealand Declaration on Rural Health 2026 sets out plainly, when health systems fail Indigenous communities, the failure is not one of culture or capability, but of structures that lack political courage and exclude Indigenous authority from decision making.
Family medicine exists to close that gap. Comprehensive, community-based primary care, delivered by family doctors and rural generalists working alongside nurses, allied health professionals and Indigenous practitioners, remains the most effective foundation for rural health worldwide. It works on a simple principle that the Declaration puts at its centre: nothing about us without us. Rural and Indigenous communities are not passive recipients of care. They are the co-creators of their own health, and often the source of the solutions that work.
Central to the conference was an argument that Russell embodies: that Indigenous knowledge is a system of understanding the world in its own right, and that a community's own way of knowing should shape the care it receives. A keynote from Dr Diana Kopua and Mark Kopua explored Māori learning systems and ways of knowing. This is not folklore to be accommodated at the margins of a health system. It is a framework for care.
A conference grounded in place
Rural WONCA 2026 was hosted by the Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network in partnership with the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice, guided throughout by Te Rōpū Ārahi, its Māori leadership group, which sat on every committee. The conference theme, Whānau Ora, took its name from a whakataukī (proverb):
Nāku te rourou, nāu te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi
With your basket and my basket, the people will thrive
Our deepest thanks to Russell Riki and the whānau of Whāingaroa for their manaakitanga.
Read, watch and explore