Wāhine Kāi Tahu mōrehu. Navigating Kāi Tahu identity and belonging, post foster system

The child protection system in the settler colonial state of Aotearoa New Zealand is a monolith to colonisation, founded on western family ideologies, while removing Māori children disproportionality (Waitangi Tribunal. 2021). The impact of removal on Māori children and families is felt across lifespans, impacting individuals, whānau, hapū, and iwi (Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, 2024). While research, reports, Tribunals, and Commissions touch on the impacts of child removal to identity and belonging, there has been little research that specifically focuses on this for Māori. In reports completed by Whānau Ora (2020) and the Waitangi Tribunal (2021), wāhine Māori are recognised as the population group most impacted on, by the child protection system. The intersectional approach I take, looking at wāhine Kāi Tahu experiences of the foster system, addresses both the gap in research of Indigenous identity and belonging, and the system impacts on wāhine Māori.

In recent years, services and responses in ‘partnerships’ with iwi are emerging; these represent early processes of partial devolvement of the system to Māori (Cleaver, 2024; Paki Paki et al., 2023). As we continue to exist in coloniality, as wāhine Kāi Tahu Māori, understanding our lifespan impacts from removal provides analysis, knowledge, and solutions of what a system looks like that upholds our mana. Understanding what identity and belonging is for foster system survivors (mōrehu), how the system impacts, and what the connectors are to navigating lifetimes, contributes to developing what devolvement looks like in practice, founded in mana wāhine.

The (re)Search asked four key questions:

1. What is wāhine Kāi Tahu identity and sense of belonging?
2. What are the foster system impacts on the mana of wāhine Kāi Tahu mōrehu?
3. How do wāhine Kāi Tahu mōrehu connect to identity and belonging?
4. What is foster system transformation that supports the identity, belonging, and mana of wāhine Kāi Tahu?

Through the development of a Kāi Tahu framework, I use a bricolage approach to methodology, with Mana Wāhine Theory as the overarching methodology, combined with Kāi Tahutaka; Resurgence; Pūrākau; and Autoethnography. In centring Māori knowledge systems, our celestial and ancestral stories are centred; these are interwoven with an autoethnographical storying of navigating identity and belonging post system, alongside stories and photographs from three wāhine Kāi Tahu system survivors (collaborators). 

Bringing all the threads together, the (re)Search findings characterised the strength of wāhine Kāi Tahu identity through our Kāi Tahu understandings of the world, and the celestial and ancestral knowledges that wāhine Kāi Tahu carry, connected to stories, lands, and knowledges. System impacts on wāhine Kāi Tahu found: systemic violence, erasing and silencing wāhine Māori, including wāhine Kāi Tahu celestial and ancestral stories; infringements on the reproductive justices rights of wāhine, resulting in intergenerational child protection involvement; experiences of isolation, abandonment, homelessness, and breach of rights; dislocation from whakapapa, whenua, and whanau; and loss of cultural practices. In the journey of repairing our identity and belonging,  post foster system, the key connectors were: being on land and learning our stories; (re)Connecting with whānau and whakapapa; engaging with wāhine Māori art practices; and the restoration of cultural practices, including language revitalisation. The final question was answered in response to the first three questions, asserting that to transform the child protection system, processes of moving towards abolition are required. Abolition was viewed as a structural process that starts with devolving services from the state to Kāi Tahu, while the government addresses the wider colonial impacts and infringements on the social structure of Māori. The structural repair of Māori society was seen as a key requirement for successful abolition, where Māori are again able to provide social safety, in a contemporary relevant way, connected to our traditional support structures.

The findings map out the impact of the system on wāhine Kāi Tahu mōrehu, providing a set of attributes of a flourishing wāhine Kāi Tahu identity, key connectors to restoring identity and belonging, and the elements required for system transformation. These findings all contribute to the ongoing work of Kāi Tahu, as we seek to again be sovereign decision-makers on our lands.