Abuse in Care: State falsified woman's birth certificate, erased Māori identity
Wednesday, 9 March 2022
A woman whose Māori whakapapa was erased from her birth certificate so she could be adopted to a Pākehā family says she was essentially sold to a new family, and her whakapapa was stolen from her.
The woman, who can only be referred to as Ms AF, spoke on Wednesday at the third day of a two-week inquiry into the Māori experiences of abuse in state care between 1950 and 1999, by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care.
Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei is hosting the hearings at its marae in Tāmaki Makaurau.
AF (Ngāti Tāhinga me Whakatōhea, Sami, Navajo and Aboriginal) was removed from her 16-year-old mother and 18-year-old father as a baby after being born a month prematurely.
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AF was sexually abused and belittled by an uncle from age 3 until age 9. When he abused her, he told her he could do what he wanted because she was not his “bloodline”.
Then, aged 14, she was raped by someone her uncle knew, the inquiry heard.
AF said in order to streamline her adoption to a Catholic Pākehā couple, her Māori identity was edited out of her birth certificate.
The state got away with it because of her relatively light skin, and she only learned the truth of her whakapapa later in life.
“They stole my whakapapa and my whenua from me and my descendants,” she said.
She said the state owed adoptees like her an apology for failing to properly screen adoptive families, and denying them their true whakapapa. As an adopted person, she had no legal rights to her mother’s whenua, the inquiry heard.
Now in her 60s, AF is a successful lawyer, has a PhD in law and Māori tikanga, and has been in a happy long-term relationship for the past 20 years.
She has been clean of alcohol and drugs for more than 35 years, and hasn’t attempted suicide in more than 25 years. She said her healing only began when she was able to meet her birth family, and understand her ancestry.
“It confirmed everything. I am Māori, I belong. I am mana whenua, I belong. My ancestral history is here.”
The second witness to give evidence on Wednesday, who was referred to as AE, is undertaking a PhD on the impacts of closed adoptions on children and their whakapapa.
AE’s own children pepeha fluently about their father’s family, down to the Niuean villages he is from. For their mother, “it’s complicated”, she said.
“I can’t give my tamariki a firm grounding in terms of their whakapapa … and that doesn’t feel fair. How can you be Māori if you don’t know where you’re from?”
AE was adopted at birth in 1961 to a Pākehā couple, who lived on a lifestyle block in Waitākere, Auckland. It felt like she and two other Māori children were adopted into their home just to work on their farm, she said.
“We were treated differently to their children … I don’t ever remember feeling loved or cared for,” she said.
Her adoptive father sexually abused her in the room she shared with her two adoptive sisters. When she was 13 and cycling home from school, she was abducted, raped, and beaten so horrifically her jaw had to be wired shut at the hospital to heal.
At a court hearing soon after the attack, she watched, unable to speak, as her adoptive father gave her up to the state, and blamed her for her own attack.
From the courthouse she was driven to Allendale Girls’ Home in Auckland, where she stayed on and off for two years, occasionally staying at Bollard Girls’ Home, also in Auckland, after which she was placed with a Māori foster family.
“They didn’t just love me, they taught me how to be loved … I didn’t know what a real family was like, and they loved me, and that was a new experience.”
AE found her birth family after her first daughter was born in 1984.
AE said she wished a family member might have been found to raise her instead.
AE said Māori whanau, often poor or with elderly grandparents, or living rurally, were overlooked for adoption, “yet you can give children to monsters”, she said.
“The pain and suffering caused by the removal of us from our cultural heritage is immeasurable and quite unfixable, where these connections have been erased.”
The hearings continue until March 18.