“Faces of Innocents: High rates of child abuse among Māori can be traced back to colonisation, academic says.” Waikato Associate Professor Leonie Pihama, director of Te Kotahi Research Institute at Waikato University and director of Māori and Indigenous Analysis makes this claim. But is it true?
The resurgence of interest in Māori culture driven by Pihama and other academics and Māori activists is not always accurate when they treat Māori history as pick and mix.
It’s true Māori are disproportionately represented in child abuse statistics today, since data were first collected in 1967 and, arguably, prior.
Before colonialism Māori were hunters, gatherers and food growers struggling to survive if food was scarce or neighbouring tribes pillaged and stole, when they were hungry, or sometimes just for the heck of it. Villages were fortified to protect the inhabitants, life was hard and death, violence and slavery everyday occurrences.
Mōkai (servants or slaves) were usually spoils of war, condemned to lives of drudgery, danger, heavy physical work and obedience to their masters or mistresses' whims; they were expected to fight under supervision, could be used to negotiate with enemies, or as food if supplies were short.
The Prow
The life of the unborn child had little value and they, along with the baby girls that made it into the world, were dispatched to the afterlife without regret if food was scarce.
There is much evidence to support the conclusion that both infanticide and induced abortion were widely practiced in pre- and post-New Zealand by the Māoris. Reasons for the practice of both abortion and infanticide were more often social than medical. The desire to stay young, fertility control, and the fear of social disgrace are cited as some reasons why abortion was practiced. Methods of inducing abortion included drugs, religious methods, and constrictive belts. Infanticide was practiced as revenge by a mother on a wandering husband or as a means of matching the population to the food supply. Because female babies were less highly valued than males, it was females who were almost always killed. The religous mythology surrounding both these practices is reviewed.
NIH National Library of Medicine, “Māori abortion practices in pre and early European New Zealand”, 28 December 1977
Early settler and writer Joel Samuel Polack recalled his conversation with Māori women between 1831 and 1837.
On taxing some females with having committed infanticide, they laughed heartily at the serious manner in which I put the question. They told me the poor infants did not know or care much about it. One young woman, who had recently destroyed a female infant, said that she wished her mother had done the same to her, when she was young; ‘For why should my infant live?’ she added; ‘to dig the ground! to be a slave to the wives of her husband! to be beaten by them, and trodden under foot! No! can a woman here protect herself, as among the white people?’
Hobson’s Pledge, “Colonisation-Violence Link Debunked”, 16 November 2018
Government accounts of colonisation gloss over the two decades of missionary work before the arrival of European settlers and don’t mention the Christian revival of 1835 and 1845 at all.
Human life had little value in pre-European Māori culture; that value was introduced by Christian missionaries such as Henry Williams, head of the Anglican CMS mission, who earned Māori trust and became an effective peacemaker during the tribal musket wars from when he arrived in NZ in 1823 until the wars ended in 1840.
The first missionary to arrive in NZ was Samuel Marsden who held the first Christian service on NZ soil in the Bay of Islands on Christmas Day 1814 when he and other missionaries saw very little response from Māori to their preaching the gospel.
Authors Evans and McKenzie researched and wrote about NZ Christian revivals, and they claim the great Māori awakening was the greatest Christian revival of all when they published their research in 1999.
The greatest evangelical movement to occur, so far, in New Zealand, was in fact the first one to happen at all. This movement occurred approximately between the years 1835 and 1845, centring around the year 1839.
Strangely, this great movement has been largely neglected amongst church historians in the land of “the long white cloud”. It was to be followed by a period of terrible wars, between some of the Māori and some of the white people. The conflict tended to overshadow the great good which had happened before, causing it to be forgotten or denied. There was much unoccupied land in parts of New Zealand when the white settlers began arriving after 1840, but some conflict was probably inevitable. The great awakening also occurred substantially before large-scale white settlement began. As a result, church history in New Zealand is often seen as starting with the beginnings of the white settlement.
In 1867, the main Anglican historian of this Māori movement, Bishop William Williams, published the story, entitled “Christianity Among the New Zealanders”. In his earlier ministry he had translated the New Testament into the Māori language; had seen many of the events he described, and had access to many CMS documents of the relevant time. In 1989, the Banner of Truth Trust publishing house in Edinburgh, issued a reprint of this book. These publishers expressed their belief that this great movement was “a work of grace...which ranks second to none in the annals of missionary endeavour”.
Robert Evans and Roy McKenzie, “Evangelical Revivals in NZ”.
Colonisation is defined as “the action or process of settling among and establishing control over the indigenous people of an area” or “the action of appropriating a place or domain for one’s own use”.
Christian missionaries in the 1800s were not expected to colonise, but set up mission stations to preach the gospel, teach cultivation and farming practices, translate the New Testament and introduce reading and writing in English. Missionaries were discouraged from buying land.
Missionaries purchased land for the Church Missionary Society (for mission churches and buildings) and later to put land in reserve for Māori when settlers moved in. Private missionary land purchases were controversial from the outset. A few missionaries thought it wrong to buy or own land under any circumstances; the Church Missionary Society issued confused policy on the subject; and there was settler and New Zealand Company resentment. Missionaries who bought land did so to provide for their families. They argued their case with earnest conviction, but in Henry Williams’ case, to no avail – ultimately, he was disconnected from the Church Missionary Society, until later reinstated.
In December 1830, in a letter to his brother-in-law Edward Marsh, Henry Williams foresaw the need to buy land for his children, who at 15 would cease to be supported by the Church Missionary Society, and become a burden on their parents. In a virtual absence of potential occupations, farming was a solution. “We have written to the Society respecting the propriety of purchasing land on their [the children’s] account; we do not wish to commence anything of the kind without their approbation. At the same time, I do not see what else can be done”.
The Williams Museum
Māori eventually benefited from the decades of early missionary work when the Christian revival transformed them from killers and cannibals into people who experienced God’s love and forgiveness and became ambassadors of that goodwill.
MOTHERS who used to trample their children to death, when infants, to get rid of them, because they were troublesome, are now possessed of the love of God, and love their offspring. MEN whose hands were against every man, and every man’s against them, who used to kill and devour their enemies in war, are now walking in the fear of God, and in the comforts of the Holy Spirit, who love their neighbours as themselves, and all mankind for Christ’s sake. CHILDREN who were ignorant and debased by the corrupt example of their parents, are now instructed and taught in schools, and can read fluently in the New Testament Scriptures.
Evangelical Revivals in NZ – Māori culture, page 12
Colonising NZ wasn’t easy when Māori became a curious dichotomy, in the words of the authors: an “incongruous mixture of the good and the bad” when the first settlers arrived, brought by the New Zealand Company in 1840.
The missionaries had given Māori with a better standard of living through farming techniques, new crops and access to better food, clothing and shelter and they were better prepared for the commercial opportunities that presented with the arrival of the settlers through missionary work.
For the first few years of European settlement Māori quickly grasped openings to provide goods and services in order to obtain new products, and construct or commission European-style houses, churches and boats. They grew large quantities of potatoes, vegetables and melons, sold fish, shellfish and pork, expanded into wheat and barley, provided firewood, and exchanged weavings and carvings for money or clothing and/or good blankets.
They also provided guiding services, ferry services across rivers and bays, and assisted new settlers to travel to their land blocks and construct their first houses. Some crewed on European-owned ships, but most Māori were reluctant employees, preferring to maintain their traditional lifestyle and independence.
Initial trades were often for barter or exchange, but Māori quickly learned the value of money, as one settler commented: “…they were remarkably shrewd at driving a bargain, had a very appreciative opinion of their commodities, and a critical knowledge of the value of the ‘utu’ (money) and the goods taken in exchange”.
The Prow
A simple gauge of Māori health is life expectancy at birth which was 28–30 years before colonisation and 73.4 years for Māori males and 77.1 years for Māori females in 2021.
Māori were undoubtedly better off in every aspect of their lives from colonisation, but that’s not what Pihama says.
Colonisation impacts on our children through the removal of every part of our cultural framework that enabled us to keep our children safe.
But Māori didn’t keep their children safe pre-colonisation when they practised abortion, infanticide and the sport of war, until they adopted Christian values.
And I think that model of the nuclear family, the domestic unit, is actually an unhealthy model for a culture of people who are used to having a collective relationship.
I can’t disagree that collective relationships are stronger than the nuclear family unit, but Māori have always had the choice to retain that social structure. It’s not the responsibility of anyone to tell someone else how to structure their own family. The question must be asked: were tribal bonds taken from Māori or did they choose to abandon them?
“Historical trauma caused by colonisation is the root cause of intergenerational issues, particularly child abuse within Māori families,” Pihama said.
This statement has absolutely no basis in history and appears a very poor excuse for not taking proper care of your children.
