Children who were in state care have described being used as slave labour instead of going to school.
The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry is being held at Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei marae. Photo: supplied by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei
Tuesday was the second day of a hearing of the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry into the experiences of Māori in state and faith-based care.
It is not known how many Māori were abused. But Māori are disproportionately represented in state and faith-based care, and in reported cases of abuse.
All of Tuesday's witnesses told the commission of years of physical abuse; by fist, broom, jug chord and walking stick.
But they also spoke of the torment of not knowing themselves. A pain, they said, that lingers today.
Glenda Maihi, who is Te Arawa, said that being in state care meant they were denied their identity and their whakapapa.
"I don't want other children to have to endure what I did," Maihi said as she tearfully sat before the commission via video link.
"The overwhelming sense I have of my childhood is the feeling of being alone. During my entire childhood I didn't know what love was. All I knew was the abuse, the hurt and feeling angry."
Born in Rotorua, Maihi said she was taken from her mother as a five-year-old in the 1970s. Split from her siblings, what was then the Department of Social Welfare placed her in a foster home in Christchurch.
The torment started almost immediately, with constant physical abuse. She saw school as a sanctuary, and spent her days dreading the return to her foster house.
A few years later she was moved to another home, but the story was the same. The physical abuse continued.
Maihi then moved to a third house. This, she said, was different. It was the first time she felt loved and that third foster parent came to be known as 'mum'.
But there was a pain that lingered. The damage of the state intervention, as well as the trauma caused by the actions of caregivers appointed, and paid for, by a state that was supposed to protect her.
"One of the worst effects of being in state care has been the loss of my identity, the loss of my whānau and the loss of my whakapapa," she told the commission.
"I wondered why social welfare did not ask my whānau if they wanted to take me into care. My mum's brother told me he came to Christchurch to try to look for me, but social welfare couldn't find him."
Maihi's pain is one that is shared by many Māori who have come forward to the Royal Commission, who will speak over the next two weeks.
One family of six siblings, who spoke anonymously, told the inquiry they had a happy childhood with doting - albeit troubled - parents who they said were good to their kids, but not to each other.
In the mid-1990s, the state intervened.
They recalled a convoy of cars arriving, and the children and their mother being taken away one by one. Their father was asleep.
"He woke up to everybody gone, all of his children," one of them said.
They wondered aloud what would have been if any effort was made to help their parents, to send them instead to extended whānau.
Instead, what followed was more than a decade of abuse and indignity. They were separated from their mother, and then each other.
They were eventually reunited as siblings, but were moved around houses, boarding homes, farms and institutions.
They said their education was neglected because they were treated as slaves.
"You'd get a hiding every day, on a daily basis," recalled one. "We [were] forced into doing things that we didn't know how to do. Like, for me, I was forced to cook and make Māori bread of fry bread and I didn't know how to do that.
"No one taught me how to do that so you were just forced to do it and if you get it wrong, you'd get a hiding."
Things were no better when the siblings were placed on a farm. They were forced into hard labour before and after school, sometimes being woken at 3am. Then, they eventually missed school altogether.
They said they were made to be slaves, and no one came to check on them. When people and communities did find out or witnessed the abuse, they turned a blind eye.
"They'd get me and my siblings to go out into the paddocks and cut all the thistles," one of the siblings told the commission.
"We were almost fainting but we were not allowed a break, they were forcing us to carry on. You're not allowed a drink of water. On the hot as days I used to put my siblings under a tree while I carried on working."
The whānau said they suffered years of physical, psychological and sexual abuse until they turned 17.
Then, they were on their own, cast out into the world with nothing but trauma. No knowledge of their family or their whakapapa, where a home may be.
"I still feel like I'm trying to find myself, where I belong and who I belong to," said one of the siblings.
"I know I'm Māori. But do I feel it? It's 50-50."
The whānau said, at the very least, state carers should be vetted. They also want accountability for where things went so wrong - they've seen none of that so far.
But they had broader questions, which the royal commission said it is exploring: Would being connected to - or placed with - their whānau have led to better things?
