Abuse in Care: Institutions 'operated as they were intended', Māori panel says
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
People with disabilities experience higher rates of violence than nondisabled people. Disabled people, their whānau and advocates have been sharing stories of historical abuse at the Abuse in Care – Royal Commission of Inquiry Disability, Deaf and Mental Health institutional care.
Abuse isn’t an unfortunate consequence of care institutions, abuse is their systemic purpose, an expert kaupapa Māori panel told the Royal Commission on Wednesday, the final day of the hearing.
A kaupapa Māori panel made up of healthcare specialists, andMāori leaders in disability and mental health care, presented their thoughts on the systemic abuse that tāngata whaikaha Māori experienced while in state care. The inquiry covered from 1950 to 1999.
The assumption that care was the purpose of these institutions was challenged by Dr Tristram Ingham (Ngāti Kahungungu, Ngāti Porou).
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He said the evidence clearly showed that care wasn’t the goal of these Crown institutions, it was incarceration, and any steps taken to change that have been superficial.
“These systems, in my view, have operated as they were intended,” he said.
“I’ve seen nothing, even to the present day, that gives me any confidence that the power base has shifted, or that there is a genuine willingness to empower with tāngata whaikaha Māori communities, tāngata whai ora [mental health] communities, to actually lead the development in this space.”
For Māori, the idea of segregating tāngata whaikaha from the hapū and iwi was foreign pre-colonisation, Moe Milne said.
Milne (Ngāti Hine), an advocate and psychiatric nurse, told the commission how her tupuna, born with a disability, became the leader of Ngāti Hine, responsible for determining the direction of the iwi.
Tāngata whaikaha were not seen as less than, Milne said, but were placed in positions that benefited the iwi and added value to the moemoeā of the tribe.
Advocate and special adviser to the inquiry Gary Williams said if his whānau had not been told by the state that he would be better off in an institution, he wouldn’t have been lost to them for 20 years, his reo wouldn’t have been taken, and he would have taken his rightful place on the marae.
“My role was always going to be the seeker and the planner and making sure that things got done my way,” Williams said.
“You can imagine that my world changed when I was 14 when I was put into care.”
Williams (Ngāti Porou) said the Crown separated people from their whānau and institutionalised them to validate its existence.
“We talk about the care and protection system, but I think that’s a misnomer,” he said.
”It’s never been about care, and it’s never been about protection of the people. It’s about the care of keeping the system going so that the system can feed itself.”
Whānau on the outside of facilities such as Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital, Kimberly Centre and Lake Alice Psyciatric Hospital tried to understand what was happening to their loved ones – on the inside, Māori employees were trying to protect them.
Ronald Baker (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Te Whānau o Rongomaiwahine) told the commission how he fought against the systemic racism and harm done to patients by those within the institutions during his time working as a nurse, and when he progressed to leadership roles in hospitals.
“They just gathered all these people up from Māori villages, they took them into all these places, and they just admitted them, and once you got in the medical superintendent was bigger than God.”
Milne agreed and said their fight for the patients was always blocked by those in higher positions. She said the barrier was the Crown itself, refusing to share power with those who know how to make changes for the betterment of tāngata whaikaha Māori.
“It’s colonial systemic abuse of us as a people,” she said.
“The systemic abuse then enables personal abuse to happen. The systemic abuse allows for abuse that is deliberate.”
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Ingham said that even though many of the institutions have been shut down, without a shift in power, tāngata whaikaha will continue to be abused by the state.
“The bricks and mortar may have gone, but the institution and the power structures still exist today.
“These power structures are uniquely responsive to changing the rhetoric, changing the guise, changing the way they appear to be responsive which is fundamentally not changing the differential in power dynamic control.”