Kare Tipa and her Uncle Toni who was taken into state care when he was nine years old. (Photo supplied)

More than two-thirds of children in state care are Māori, up to 10 times the rate of non-Māori children.

Those whānau who have experience of tamariki taken into care, like Kare Tipa, say the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Bill will do nothing to help those statistics.

My Uncle Toni was one of the thousands of Māori children who became a ward of the state in the 1950s. His is a familiar story: a tamaiti who was taken from his whānau by the state when he was nine years old, resulting in trauma that he carried for the rest of his life.

My uncle’s story started with his uncle, Poua Pita Tipa, heading off to fight in World War II. He was like many Māori men of that time, who were ready to fight with pride and vigour to prove themselves as citizens of New Zealand.

Of the more than 3600 men who served voluntarily with the Māori Battalion, 649 were killed or died on active service, 267 were taken prisoner or reported as missing, and another 1712 were wounded. This casualty rate was almost 50 percent higher than the average for the New Zealand infantry battalions.

But even that sacrifice wasn’t enough to earn them respect and equality back home. Despite distinguishing themselves in battlefields overseas, those who came back, like Poua, my grandfather, faced both discrimination and hardships on their return. For example, returning Māori servicemen weren’t eligible to get the same psychological care and land benefits as their Pākehā counterparts, resulting in many moving to the cities in search of employment.

In the late 1940s, my grandfather moved to Christchurch to look for work, leaving my tāua (grandmother) in Moeraki, the fishing village of her ancestors, to raise their 10 children.

At that time, Māori women who had many children but no visible father present, were at risk from a state system that was quick to take their children away on the flimsiest of grounds, having decided they weren’t capable of raising their families. Racism was both common and overt at that time — and whānau Māori practices were viewed as inherently inferior.

But Uncle Toni had fond memories of his upbringing. Despite living in a two-bedroom home with no electricity and one tap, with nine siblings, he was connected to his land, whānau and marae, and sustained by the seabeds and gardens of his home whenua.

My uncle and his siblings, while they lacked the spoils of other children, were well-nourished, clothed, and adored by their mother.

Sadly, some of Uncle’s older siblings were soon taken into state care. He followed when he was nine years old, after taking an unloaded pistol from a friend’s house. It was a misunderstanding, an act of playfulness. But that childhood mistake put him on a pathway of displacement, abuse and incarceration for years to come. He became a ward of the state, and was placed in a boys’ home at Lookout Point in Dunedin.

Uncle attended Mornington Primary School and remembers few other Māori at that school. After defending himself from an incident with another boy at his foster home he was sent to another boys’ home in Masterton. From there, along with two other male cousins, he was placed in another foster home. In the 1950s, it was common for Māori children to be fostered. I know of two other uncles who were placed with “respectable” families in Dunedin and consequently suffered abuse.

Uncle talked about being taken to a well-presented house with nice furniture, wallpaper and a pantry full of food. He was excited that this place might be home. But the memory of the social welfare staff leaving was still vivid in his mind. Because, immediately after they left, Uncle and the other boys were directed to the animal shed to set up their beds on hay, and told that their daily duties would be chopping firewood, cooking meals for the main family, and working on the farm.

For the rest of Uncle’s life, any ringing bell triggered past trauma from this life of being used as a slave at that foster home.

He’d been ripped away from a happy childhood, growing up with a loving mother, connected to his marae and surrounded by family, to become a slave in the system. Uncle was made subservient, bereft of his language and culture, and stripped of his Māori mana motuhake.

When he was 15, Uncle was returned to his mother and remaining siblings who were now living in Dunedin. Our cousins tell how Tāua welcomed uncle home, her taken son now returned to her. She fussed over him, cooking his favourite kai at every meal, regardless of whether he was home or not. She was making up for time lost with her son. I believe that, simply through her own experiences of being a Māori woman, she understood the atrocities her dear child had faced. Such unspoken stories were common among Māori.

Uncle became a heavy drinker. I’m not surprised at this. He had a deep distrust of the system, which eventually led to incarceration and time in correctional facilities. He recalled the first time he went to jail after being charged with carnal knowledge for having sex with his non-Māori girlfriend. They were both 15 years old at the time, but after he turned 16, he was sentenced to six months imprisonment for statutory rape. This would go on his record permanently.

On another occasion, Uncle was accused of fighting at a bar. He explained to the police that they had the wrong person. But he was physically man-handled by police, and fought back. This incident resulted in charges of assaulting a police officer and disturbance of the peace. For this, he spent another 12 months in prison.

Uncle Toni felt all of his negative experiences stemmed from being Māori. He was goaded by non-Māori for being dark-skinned and for not speaking te reo Māori. And in the later years of Māori language revitalisation Uncle was also goaded by Māori for not knowing any te reo. Uncle Toni’s parents spoke te reo Māori but only in secret, this was to avoid putting their children at risk at a time when te reo Māori was not allowed in schools.

At no point in his life could he avoid criticism of being either too Māori, or not Māori enough. He was unable to feel proud of being a Māori male, even while living in his own tribal territory of Kāi Tahu. Whakapapa here goes back hundreds of years, yet he was constantly made to feel alienated in the Otago district. Racist charged incidents in the south are sadly common and intergenerational.

So, when I returned to Dunedin after many years away, as a proud Māori practitioner, working in mātauranga Māori, it was a shock to him. I was a kind of Māori that he had never known.

He was eager to hear about wānanga I was doing, my trips to kapa haka regionals, my keynote speeches at conferences, and the Māori speech competitions that I judged. He was so proud to see articles by his grandniece, Gemella Reynolds-Hatem, in Te Ārohi, Critic. In his last few years of life, Uncle became part of a collective pride in this new Māori generation.

In mid-June, Uncle’s health deteriorated and he had to return to hospital. His room was isolated, you had to go through two sets of doors to get to where he was. In one of my last visits to see him, he told me: “This place feels like jail.”

Even in his last week, Uncle was looking forward to watching me on the telly at the Matariki hautapu ceremony, where I’d be delivering a karakia. It gave him a sense of pride, a moment where he could see the storyline of being Māori as something positive, enriching, and to be celebrated. His family, his mokopuna, were bringing back the joy and pride of being a Tipa and a Māori, which he had experienced only very early in his childhood.

Uncle passed on before Matariki, but his name was acknowledged in the ceremony. Knowing that he had regained some mana back through the efforts of the generation that came after him — those of us who are now able to lead and promote positive and equitable outcomes for Māori — leaves me with a feeling of ease.

And I am left with a sense of determination — that we must reject the government’s bill to remove section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki legislation.

We owe it to Uncle Toni to keep whānau Māori in tamariki Māori lives.

Nā Kare Tipa (Kāti Hāteatea, Te Aotaumarewa, Kāi Tukē, Hinematua, Kāti Rakiāmoa, Kāi Te Ruahikhiki, Kāti Kurī, Kāti Huirapa, Kāi Tuahuriri, Kāti Wairaki) Lecturer of Māori Studies at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka (University of Otago)  and deliverer of Mātauranga Māori Kaupapa For Kotahi Mano Kāika: Kāi Tahu Te Reo Māori language Strategy.

E-Tangata, 2024