What was the idea behind the tohunga suppression act?

The idea behind the act, was really just another attempt at assimilating. There was concern at the number of Maori who dying, after having been seen by a Tohunga [Way Finder]. What many people forget is that when the Maori had an illness which they could not identify or treat... they saw that person as having broken tapu [a restriction]. This meant that the person had to undergo a cleansing, by water submersion, [as in total baptism] Think about it: all the introduced diseases were were very alien to what they had been used to; pneumonia was not known to the Maori and so, when people presented themselves with the symptoms, the Tohunga placed them in water to purify them. Now putting any one with pneumonia in water is probably not a good idea.

The whole act is underlined with cultural misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The Europeans [Pakeha] thought that the Maori were placing themselves in danger and the Maori simply just did not know how to deal with foreign disease.