This thesis is based on the oral histories of social workers,
birth parents, and adopted people who have personal experience of
‘closed stranger adoption’ in relation to New Zealand Māori.
Viewed collectively their histories, and my own analysis,
demonstrate the legislative sleight of hand and societal
illusions, which bound all parties involved in an uncomfortable
and contrived silence.
Between 1955 and 1985, over 80,000 children in New Zealand were
adopted. The majority of these adoptions were under the
state-sanctioned practice of closed stranger adoption. While
exact numbers remain unknown, it is widely accepted that a
significant proportion of these adoptions involved children of
Māori ancestry who were placed into white homes.
Although the era of closed stranger adoption, which is now widely
viewed as an indefensible social experiment, has been well
documented, there still remains very little scholarship and
analysis of the adoption of Māori children and their birth
parents, during this period. When Māori experience of adoption
is discussed, it is usually assumed that the subject is whāngai
adoptions. However, closed stranger adoption is almost the
antithesis of whāngai, the only similarity being that a child is
cared for by people other than their birth parents.
This thesis highlights the inextricable links between closed
stranger adoption practices, the relevance of ‘race’, and
ongoing colonial processes and structures in New Zealand, arguing
that while the history of closed adoption begins formally with
the passing of the Adoption Act 1955, the wider issues of
degradation, disregard and devaluing of Māori people and values
that are manifest in this particular policy and practice can be
understood as a continuation of the policies and practices of
colonisation. The manipulation of identity, the silencing and
erasure of self to fit roles described and prescribed by others,
the forced assimilation, the infantalising, the expectation of
gratitude, and the inter-generational trauma, are all practices
of colonisation that are reproduced in the closed stranger
adoption of Māori children into white families. Meanwhile, New
Zealand publicly maintained the illusion of a progressive,
egalitarian society, with an enviable record of race relations.
This thesis argues that the impact of closed stranger adoption
was particularly onerous for Māori resulting in ruinous
long-term, intergenerational consequences on Māori family
values, kinship ties, and social organisation. The most
debilitating effect for many Māori adoptees has been the
inability to trace their Māori parent, and thereby access
knowledge of their whakapapa. Many Māori adoptees grieve their
unknown whakapapa and feel ‘inauthentic’ and invisible as
Māori as a result.
However, the silence surrounding the adoption, and more recently
the out-of-home care, of Māori children is slowly starting to be
addressed. Through the use of testimony, historically
contextualised, this thesis provides a space where the burden of
holding singular, personal stories of grief and dislocation can
be shared. Making private testimonies public, provides a
powerful, amplified voice, which requires a wider societal
response.
This thesis is based on a Māori-centred research approach and
incorporates poetic transcriptions in the (re)telling of the
narratives
