Don’t look away, it happened here
When Aaron Smale started investigating the sad truth about his adoption he realised New Zealand’s apathy about the central issue behind uplifts and state care abuse: racism.
Nearly 10 years ago on Christmas Day I received a phone call that changed my life and led to a Royal Commission of Inquiry. I didn’t recognise the voice of the woman on the other end of the phone. But her opening words were, ‘‘Hi, I’m Tanya and I think I’m your sister.’’
It would take thousands of words, not a few hundred, to explain how that conversation came about and the impact it had on my life.
The basic facts are that both my sister and I were adopted at the peak of the closed adoption era of the late 1960s, early 1970s. Our different mothers were white, middle-class Pa¯ keha¯ and we were adopted by white middle-class Pa¯ keha¯ . But our birth father was Ma¯ ori.
This might seem unremarkable, but when I started asking questions as to why I had missed out on a sibling I adore, one of the answers was particularly hard to stomach. While different individuals made decisions in that adoption process, they made those decisions against the backdrop of racism.
I found many of the answers to my questions in Anne Else’s book, A Question of Adoption. Else, who is adopted, laid out the different factors and attitudes that shaped adoption practice in that era. One whole chapter looks at the question of race.
One thing that hurt and infuriated me was to find out that most of the white, middle-class couples that applied to adopt did not want a Ma¯ ori child. Children were ranked and even colourcoded and the category that was at the bottom of those rankings was Ma¯ ori boys.
That was me. Once the visceral anger subsided slightly I started to ask why? Why were Ma¯ ori boys regarded with such aversion by typical New Zealanders? Did that attitude still exist?
This sent me on a quest to figure out why Ma¯ ori and particularly Ma¯ ori men were so prominent in our worst social statistics – prison, educational failure, ill-health, suicide, etc. It was too easy to blame the individuals alone and deny it had anything to do with society’s racism. The attitude that manifested in adoption told me that New Zealand society had a problem with Ma¯ ori boys and men. And it was an attitude that it was, and is, very reluctant to admit.
The culmination of that quest to find answers led to a series of stories I wrote on state welfare abuse. It was the response from survivors and those who supported them that led to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care.
The biggest group in that story were Ma¯ ori boys.
According to research by criminologist Elizabeth Stanley, more than 100,000 children went through the welfare system in the second half of the 20th century. Snapshot surveys at
the time show 70 to 80 per cent were Ma¯ ori. That’s up to 80,000. Even if you stop reading now, I’d ask you to reflect on the implications of that. Multiply that trauma by the children and grandchildren of those Ma¯ ori individuals and have a guess where it might lead.
New Zealand likes to pride itself on its human rights record. There might be some merit in this. Or it might be that we’re simply very adept at deluding ourselves. There is a reluctance or apathy by media and society to confront the racism that is central to what happened in this issue.
During the hearings held by the Royal Commission many, including myself, gave evidence about the racism that underpins the subject of this inquiry. More than one, including Moana Jackson, drew direct parallels with the Stolen Generations of indigenous children in
Australia and North
America.
The problem is, we don’t want to face up to that fact. When the story blew up about the removal of a child in Hawke’s Bay, I wrote a piece drawing the Stolen Generations parallel. I also wrote about the economic inequality that underpins it.
A journalist put that comparison to Oranga Tamariki Minister Tracey Martin, who dismissed it as emotive and inappropriate.
Yes, it is emotive. During the evidence given by Dr Oliver Sutherland at the Royal Commission, my friend and survivor Kath Coster had to bolt from the room. Sutherland, a Pa¯ keha¯ , was fighting against racism and state abuse of Ma¯ ori children back in the 1970s. He gave detailed and gruelling evidence, including about the internal examinations of young girls in the girls’ welfare homes. That’s when Kath and another woman had to leave.
I was sitting next to Jimmy McLaughlin, who I wrote my first story on, and he started fidgeting when Sutherland talked about Owairaka boys’ home. Tyrone Marks and another survivor I know listened intently as Sutherland described children being put in solitary confinement, including in Mt Eden Prison. Both had been through that.
They listened intently as Sutherland described the electrocution (including on the genitals) and torture at Lake Alice, which they had experienced and witnessed. A state abuse survivor once told me he’d been raped so many times as a child ‘‘you could park a truck up there, and turn it around’’. For the past 35 years he’s spent more time in prison that out.
Most of the men in jail with him went through the same welfare homes.
Later in the week Auckland University sociology lecturer Tracey McIntosh stated there was a clear link between the welfare homes and gangs. I would totally agree.
What was emotive for survivors was hearing their experiences validated, and being believed in a formal inquiry when they have been told for years that they’re lying. Now they were beginning to be heard.
What is inappropriate, however, is a minister of the Crown denying this has anything to do with similar treatment of indigenous children in other
Children were ranked and even colour-coded and the category that was at the bottom of those rankings was Ma¯ori boys.
Our different mothers were white, middle-class Pa¯keha¯ and we were adopted by white middle-class Pa¯keha¯. But our birth father was Ma¯ori.
colonised countries. The inquiry has only just started and she is pre-judging the commission’s findings.
She doesn’t get to invalidate or undermine evidence that she doesn’t like or that the public might find uncomfortable. Given she is the minister responsible for both Oranga Tamariki and the Royal Commission, she might like to listen and think before she reacts.
The Waitangi Tribunal has taken the unusual step of holding an urgent inquiry into Oranga Tamariki after the attempted removal of a Ma¯ ori child in Hawke’s Bay, so denial has not served her well.
It also suggests we haven’t learned anything from history because we have denied and ignored it.
Just comparing the numbers against the population, New Zealand is actually worse. There might not have been a specific law or policy in New Zealand as there was in
Australia and North America regarding the removal of indigenous children. But this doesn’t give us plausible deniability – neither was there a specific law or policy that banned the speaking of Ma¯ ori in schools. Despite this lack of explicit intent by the state, my grandmother and many Ma¯ ori were still whacked for speaking their first language. We as a country managed to carry out this stuff without an instruction manual.
The results of indigenous child removal are the same the world over. Indigenous people in other colonised countries also predominate in statistics like high incarceration. Removing indigenous children is often justified, here and overseas, by pointing to the dysfunction and abuse in their families (poverty is another factor, but that’s another story). But if you look a little closer you often find those dysfunctional and abusive family members had the state as a parent. And that parent’s track record of abuse is on an horrific scale. The worst perpetrator can’t dress itself up as the saviour.
Australia and Canada have had a reckoning with this aspect of their history. New Zealand has spent decades and millions of dollars denying and trying to dodge responsibility.
In the report by the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s inquiry into indigenous residential schools, one of the adult children of a survivor had this to say: ‘‘I think all Canadians need to stop and take a look and not look away. Yeah, it’s embarrassing, yeah, it’s an ugly part of our history. We don’t want to know about it. What I want to see from the Commission is to rewrite the history books so that other generations will understand and not go through the same thing that we’re going through now, like it never happened.’’
New Zealanders might need to stop and take a similar look. And not look away like it never happened.
Aaron Smale is a journalist and PhD candidate. His research is focused on Ma¯ ori children in state custody.