New Zealand’s indigenous women battle trauma over ‘stolen children’

After a three-year battle with the New Zealand state to get her children back, Maori former nurse Ellen Hiini was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She is not alone in her struggle – thousands of indigenous children have been moved into state care under a decades-long practice known as uplifting that many Maori people see as a racially skewed legacy of colonisation.

Hiini’s teenage daughters were taken away by the children’s ministry in 2017 after her partner was alleged to have sexually abused them, something she denies. Indigenous rights campaigners and health experts say uplifting disproportionately affects Maori mothers, with studies showing they are more likely to fall into depression and take their own lives. About 60% of the more than 6,000 children taken into state care in New Zealand are Maori, a group that accounts for about 17% of the population, official figures show.

The children’s ministry, known officially as the Oranga Tamariki, said family violence was the main reason for removing children, with drug and alcohol consumption also playing a part. It acknowledged the number of Maori children in its care was disproportionately high, but said it had fallen by about a third compared to a decade ago. “We have some challenges ahead and we have always said we can’t do this alone,” a ministry spokeswoman said in emailed comments.

The uplifting of children is among a raft of social issues to have sparked protests and led to rising discontent among the Maori, who say the government has done little to break a cycle of poverty and violence in their community. Maori women between the age of 15 and 44 were twice as likely as non-Maori women to die by suicide, according to Te Rau Ora, a non-governmental group that runs suicide prevention programmes for the Maori.

Resentment and tensions between the Maori people and the government boiled over last year when thousands took to the streets to demand better land rights and an end to uplifting of their children. The country’s biggest indigenous rights protests in more than a decade, they were triggered in part by an attempt to take a newborn baby from her teenage mother in hospital that prompted outrage. Some Maori campaigners say this may be too little too late, after generations of trauma that have left many women reluctant to get seek help when they need it.

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation