Closed Stranger Adoption, Māori and Race Relations in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1955-1985

Abstract

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.