Abuse inquiry: Māori babies deemed 'bad' babies and adopted to white families, tribunal hears

Wednesday, 30 October 2019

Historical cases of Māori children being wrongfully uplifted from their families are being heard at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (file photo).

Mothers of Māori babies were told their children were better off being adopted into white families than living with them, an inquiry into historical abuse has heard.

Dr Alison Green on Wednesday gave evidence in Auckland at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

Career criminal Arthur Taylor has told the Royal Commission investigating abuse he never would have messed with the law if he hadn't been placed in state care.

It is the biggest inquiry ever into what happened to children, young people and vulnerable adults in state care between 1950 and 1999.

Green was 10 days old when she was taken from her mother in 1958. Like other Māori babies at that time, she was labelled a 'bad' baby and adopted to a white, immigrant family, she said.

**READ MORE:

Removing Māori babies from mothers shortly after birth is a longstanding shame in New Zealand and it continues today. In March, Oranga Tamariki tried to uplift a baby from a young mother in Hawke's Bay Hospital.

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* Māori inquiry into Oranga Tamariki: 'We have a right to stand up for our babies'

* More than 220 children abused in Oranga Tamariki care in 2018

* We finally know the true extent of abuse in state care. It is shocking

Keith Wiffin was repeatedly abused at the state-run Epuni Boys' Home in Lower Hutt when he was a child.

* State care abuse not just 'historical', inquiry told**

Her adopted parents were told to say she had a 'touch of Spanish' to account for her dark skin, and to tell others her birth parents no longer wanted her.

Green said she was increasingly frustrated because Māori babies were still being taken from their birth families by the state.

Their removal was underpinned by racist attitudes, including a misbelief that European values were superior to Māori values, she said.

If non-Māori families were having their babies removed at the same rates there would be a public outcry, she said.

'But because we are Māori, that has happened with very little interruption until recently.'

Green was born to a Pākehā mother and a Māori father. During their first year of dating, Green's mother fell pregnant and was persuaded to place her daughter up for adoption, the inquiry heard.

'She was told that her child would have better outcomes if she lived as a Pākehā child instead of a Māori child.'

At 21 years old, Green was able to access her adoption file and track down her parents. Her mother had suffered greatly with PTSD following the adoption, to the point of panic attacks and flashbacks.

Her father had died at 31.

Doctor Rawiri Waretini-Karena also gave evidence at the tribunal about the ongoing impact of colonisation.

Domestic violence and child abuse were not a part of Māori culture pre-colonisation, he said.

He also discussed native schools, introduced in the 1860s, which saw Māori children educated entirely in English in an attempt to assimilate them into Pākehā culture, and subjected to corporal punishment if they spoke te reo.

'This abuse of children happened to vulnerable children, and it rippled into the next generations. It doesn't make any excuses but it contextualises where these things came from,' he said.

The contextual hearing is set down for two weeks, with 29 witness expected to give evidence.

Witnesses include survivors of historical cases of child rape, violence and neglect at state-owned care institutions.