Mums link deaths to colonisation
Warning: This story deals with suicide and may be distressing.
The uplift of Ziporah Huirama, her isolation from wha¯nau, and her treatment in mental-health care before she died by suspected suicide have been described as a “savage injustice” by an advocate.
Ziporah spent more than a decade in state care, including prison and mental-health facilities, where she was often in solitary confinement, medicated and finally died.
Now the 27-year-old’s death is one of at least three of young Ma¯ori whose mothers have made a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal for the losses they say are directly linked to colonisation. It comes as a Ma¯ori suicide prevention symposium run by the University of Otago is held today in Wellington.
Tasilofa Huirama, Jane Stevens and Suzy Taylor want change to the way Ma¯ori are treated for mental health and hope their claims will force the need for alternative care in
“safe” places such as on marae, into the spotlight. Stevens, whose 21-year-old son Nicky took his own life in March 2015 while under the care of Waikato District Health Board, said systemic change was desperately needed to curb high Ma¯ori suicide rates: “The largely mainstream medical model that we’ve had to work with for a very long time doesn’t work.” Stevens, of Nga¯i Tahu, said it was extremely difficult to access comprehensive, wellresourced services that recognised Ma¯ori culture and identity, which she felt was crucial to reducing suicide.
“For me, the process of the Waitangi Tribunal was a way of having a deeper, more nuanced, more researched, more open conversation around what has happened and what needs to happen. How do we really move things forward in a researched and informed and empathetic way unless we can have those ... critical conversations?”
Stevens, who is on a panel at today’s symposium, said not a lot had changed “on the ground” since the Government inquiry into mental health and addiction was set up more than two years ago.
Taylor’s daughter Georgia MacBeath, 19, killed herself in 2016 in Rotorua. The teenager, who suffered from depression and anxiety, made a serious attempt on her life 10 weeks earlier and was discharged from hospital on medication.
Taylor, now a trained counsellor, was empowered enough to ask for help but said she didn’t really get it from a system she believed was incapable of providing appropriate treatment.
“She wasn’t ever offered any other options, any kaupapa Ma¯ori perspectives or ru¯nunga, or any kind of wraparound service. Neither of us was. We were just sort of left dangling out there.”
Taylor, of Whakato¯hea, said she didn’t want to look in the eyes of one more mother and see the loss of a child by suicide. Ziporah’s death was devastating, she said.
“I think in Tasi’s situation she was dictated to because she didn’t know. She wasn’t made aware of the process for her daughter. And I just think it’s been a savage injustice what’s happened to her daughter.”
Huirama, whose daughter also went by the name Esther Osborne, said she wanted accountability, answers and change.
“We didn’t really spend much time with her once she ended up in the hands of Cyfs [now Oranga Tamariki]. She went to Cyfs at the age of 11. From then on she was always gone.”
A coroner’s inquest into Ziporah’s death in 2016 has yet to be set.
Lawyer for the claim, Stephanie Roughton, said it was expected to be heard by the tribunal in September.
Huirama, of Nga¯ti Tu¯wharetoa and Nga¯puhi descent, has also applied to be a claimant in the Waitangi Tribunal’s urgent inquiry into the way Oranga Tamariki removes Ma¯ori children and takes them into state care.
Roughton said the importance of the claims was twofold; to address the wha¯nau experiences, so that their voices were heard and documented, allowing healing.
“But also one of the key outcomes is policy changes and seeing change happen so that future generations are not subject to the same discrimination, the same treatment.”
A Capital and Coast District Health Board spokesman said the DHB again expressed sympathy to Ziporah’s wha¯nau and acknowledged the traumatic loss.
However, he said because of privacy issues the DHB could not comment publicly on Ziporah’s treatment.
The Ministry of Health did not answer questions on Ma¯ori mental-health care.