Via Scoop, a New Zealand news source, a speech by an MP in the Maori Party: Harawira: Avian flu - Can we Hongi? Excerpts:

About 100 citizens of Aotearoa die from influenza every year; every year that is except 1918, the year that the so-called 'plague of the Spanish Lady' overran our country, and killed more than 8000 people.

And of those, Maori died from flu at a rate more than seven times higher than that for non-Māori.

Indeed Sir Peter Buck said that in three months, influenza killed more Maori in
Aotearoa, than the military campaigns of Gallipoli, France and Belgium, in WW1.

Every Maori community bears the scars of lives lost to the black plague, and that’s not black for black is beautiful - that’s the black colour of the skin from victims dying from a lack of oxygen.

The stories are truly gruesome. People queuing to be sprayed with zinc-sulphate; they called it 'fumigation' but it didn't stop the flu. Cinemas, churches, halls, schools, whare hui, whare kai - all the places where people gathered - were
closed; families were left isolated for weeks; and people stopped visiting for fear of catching the disease.

The Ellerslie racecourse was turned into an emergency hospital, Victoria Park was turned into a massive morgue, and special trains were enlisted to haul bodies out to Waikumete Cemetery for burial.
...
Mr Speaker, I have taken the time to remind the House of the 1918 flu epidemic, because in many respects it was Aotearoa’s forgotten disaster, during the world's worst ever recorded pandemic of influenza.

And it can just as easily happen again in a world where low standards of health, overcrowding, poor diet and bad housing, mean a disproportionately high Maori death rate in any pandemic is guaranteed.

And so I acknowledge the enduring patience and commitment of people like Kathrine Clarke of Hapai Te Hauora Tapui; of Ngaire Whata of Korowai Aroha; and Dr Lorna Dyall from the Division of Maori Health at Auckland University, for highlighting the desperate need for full and frank communication with Māori communities.

Our people have many, many questions, and nobody is giving them any decent answers. Will our marae be closed? Who will care for our kaumatua and kuia? What will happen to our tangi, which Te Arawa Maori Trust Board’s Anaru Rangiheuea has described as being our most important cultural practice? Will we even get our loved ones back? Will they be sealed? Can we meet to grieve? Can we hongi?

"Hongi," I have just learned, is a traditional Maori greeting featuring the rubbing of noses.