Thank Jesus Pakeha media have finally picked up on the horror of Oranga Tamariki’s theft of Māori children.
I have been arguing since 2016 that this appalling action by Oranga Tamariki amounts to a stolen generation.
I stated in my political wrap up of the first 18 months of the new Government that…
Children in State Care:At some point the enormity and horror of an underfunded agency stealing children from their parents and placing them into state care where they are abused is going to shame the nation into action. Unfortunately it gains little or no attention because the majority of kids taken are Māori and with no Māori Party to champion this, the issue stays under the radar.
…The Hui and Waatea Radio have worked incredibly hard at breaking this story earlier this year, but because of the deeply racist manner in which NZ media unconsciously works, it doesn’t become news until Pakeha media investigates it.
We all accept that there will be some parents who are a danger to their children, but they are the exception, not the rule, and the incredibly low thresholds being used to seize children is just unacceptable. We know these children have more risk of being abused in State care, we know these children taken into state care tend to turn up in our prisons, we know that we are not supporting vulnerable parents to help them be the best parents they can be.
We just waltz in and take new born babies from the arms of mothers.
And we do it with such ease the the Mother is Māori.
It sickens me and listening to these Wellington bureaucrats justify this abuse is galling.
We know how the neoliberal welfare state treats the most vulnerable, their crocodile tears wipe away none of this ugly stain.
I swear, if the bloody State attempted to take my child from me, I would cut every one of them down.
Every. Single. One.
How can this be the Politics of Kindness?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_59YGpo-c4
This is obviously very worrying. I saw the pictures of the Oranga Tamariki women online, and was immediately struck by them all being large women in garishly coloured clothing, rather than being professional looking social workers, and if the authorities are deliberately choosing Maori to hit on Maori, then I assume that selecting people built like prison wardens and dressed like clowns, is part of the intimidation process designed to create a power imbalance.
Confrontation is 70’s philosophy, and the least effective way of solving any sensitive or complex issue, ever. Subjecting newly delivered Mums and their babies to govt sanctioned brutality is lazy and bullying, and I query the humanity and the wisdom of the decision makers who have developed a one-size-fits-all template, and then use the police to enforce it. Its not ok.
Question: Where is the evidence that children entrusted to the state are better for it ?
Answer: Non-existent.
national used Maori to hit on Maori look at all the damage pull the benefit done
I just watched the Melanie Reid film clip you referenced above, and it is hugely harrowing and totally shocking. I am beyond crying.
Guess part of Oranga Tamariki’s agenda was to provide a brother for the child’s older sibling who had been placed with an English family. Oranga Tamariki showed themselves to be sly, totally untrustworthy, plain scruffy- in itself offensive turning up with just-out-of-bed hair.
I didn’t like their seemingly regarding the baby as an object, and their lack of respect and concern for mum, baby, and the young dad. No woman should be subjected to the lengthy torturous scenario which this young mother was. Bill of Rights: Cruel and Unusual.
Nor did her new-born baby benefit in any way from having a mother so
consumed with anxiety and fear entirely due to the govt body which is theoretically responsible for the well being of all of our children.
Even worse, this just skims the surface of the issues facing deprived and dislocated Maori communities. In this case, whanau have come together to provide help and support, but in other cases other mothers’ lives must be enough to drive them to drink or drugs. And pious humbugs bemoan Maori women’s smoking rates. Stuff them.
As a reader and re-reader of Dickens, nothing could have prepared me
for seeing real-life film of how inadequate people with power interact with people on the fringe of main stream society in this cold barbaric little country – clueless or uncaring, or both, about the damage which they themselves are perpetuating.
Melanie Reid is a journalist of the highest quality and integrity
it is absolutely terrible separating new Mothers from their babies
….what is needed is support
While the police seemed to play a positive role in this case they are just as bad when it comes to the poor and unfair treatment of our Maori people and some of the stories will be just as harrowing if not worse.
So censorship is alive and well on this site – no surprises there!
I knew a boy who didn’t know that he was adopted. He was very close to one of my children. He never understood why he didn’t get on with his mother. He was told that he was Scottish.
Straight A student at VU, after attending an alpha white male secondary school. Went to London, got a good job.
An aunt in London not knowing what he didn’t know, told him he was adopted into the family, and a Maori from Taumarunui.
Along the track he was on a railway track and run over by a train. The
St Pancras coroner returned an open verdict. He’d be in his 40’s now.
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