Lindsay Mitchell
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio, tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.
That was the question headlining a lengthy article by Marty Sharpe in the weekend’s DomPost.
Here are my questions in response.
What if the Maori child’s aunties, uncles and grandparents are non-Maori families?
More Maori partner with non-Maori than Maori. This is a long-standing trend.
Will the radicals who are currently pushing a separatist agenda decide that a Maori child must be placed with a Maori family in preference to kin family?
Will cultural ties triumph over blood ties?
These questions literally keep me awake at night.
In the sixties in Auckland more Maori married non-Maori than Maori. These people formed life-changing and often lifelong bonds. They were possibly the most important thing in each other’s lives.
They were being what it is to be human.
In the same way, children can and do form bonds with caregivers. They don’t care about skin colour.
Pause.
So not far on from the original question posed in the headline, will we hear, “Should Maori be having children with non-Maori?”
When that sort of thinking gets a grip, well…
I am reminded of a gut-wrenching novel I read in the late 1990s, Holly, by Albert French, set in North Carolina 1940s. The story of a young negro who fell in love with a white girl, Holly, who reciprocated. He lost his life for it.
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