Undimmed by arrests, anger and claims of counterproductive tactics, the Wellington-based climate activists are determined to keep disrupting roads. Toby Manhire joins an introductory meeting. 

‘Welcome, everyone. Would you like to put your cameras on, if you’re able to? It’s nice to see everyone’s faces.” Those faces hardly reveal a rogue’s gallery. It could be a bridge club, a pottery enthusiasts’ AGM. They range from 20-somethings to grandparents, 13 all up. “Acknowledging all of your courage for turning up to face the difficulties of the climate crisis,” says the Restore Passenger Rail organiser. “And acknowledging and welcoming diversity here. Some people who are longtime activists, some people who are dipping their toes in the water for the first time. It’s really wonderful.”

We’re at “Climate Crisis & Civil Resistance”, an introductory meeting run by the group that has mounted a series of protests obstructing Wellington roads, halting traffic and making a lot of people really, really furious. The session description on the Zoom call: “REFUSE TO BE A BYSTANDER AND TAKE ACTION!” 

I’ve joined as an observer, having undertaken not to name any of the participants involved. Some I recognise from photographs of the protest action. At least a couple have been arrested for their roles in the disruption, signature characteristics of which include banners emblazoned with “Restore Passenger Rail” and the gluing of hands to roads. 

In two bursts of activity in October and again across the last fortnight, RPR supporters have attached themselves – literally – to state highway on-ramps, to Vivian Street and Transmission Gully, to Adelaide Road and the Terrace; they’ve scaled motorway gantries and the mouth of Mt Victoria tunnel. Yesterday, the target was Glenmore Street, by the Karori tunnel. 

On almost every occasion, traffic has been halted for hours, prompting waves of indignation and raw fury. Police have mobilised in response, warning that the activists’ approach carries the risk of serious injury or death. A number of protesters have charges before the courts. Some could face prison sentences. 

I’m curious about who is willing to go to such lengths in the cause of passenger rail, about the tactical rationale. I’m hoping to get a sense of how they feel about the political and public response, especially the rejoinder that the approach is counterproductive to the cause. And to hear the pitch: what is being said to recruit new people to stick themselves to tarmac?

Following the opening remarks we’re divided into three breakout groups. Ours includes a pair who have been involved in the actions over recent weeks. One, a retiree, says: “It’s been really busy. Quite full on. But also very valuable.” Another is “semi-involved”; he’s been following the actions but hasn’t taken part directly. 

Then there’s a young woman who recently moved to New Zealand. “Sorry if you can hear some noise in the background, I’m babysitting for my cousins. They’re a bit enthusiastic.” She’s been involved in the Extinction Rebellion movement overseas. “I was really, really inspired by how successful the tactics of nonviolent direct action have been. In the UK, it’s been enormously, enormously successful in increasing awareness of the climate crisis as a major issue … It’s amazing. You see activists getting interviewed by Piers Morgan and stuff now. It just would never have happened even five years ago.”

Extinction Rebellion – or XR – made an impact in many parts of the world, New Zealand included, when it burst into public view at the end of the last decade. It was a forerunner and inspiration to groups such as Restore Passenger Rail, “shock tactics” born of exasperation. A mindset voiced by one RPR protester, Rachael Andrews, after she was arrested in October: “We’re the alarm that wakes you from sleep because your house is on fire.” 

RPR is a member of the “A22 Network”, an international group of “connected projects engaged in a mad dash to try and save humanity”. In a manifesto-of-sorts, A22 describes itself as “the Last Generation of the old world.” On tactics: “We commit to mass civil disobedience … We are open and nonviolent. We are Care and we are Freedom. We will accept the consequences of our actions and look our destiny directly in the eye.”

While the overarching mission is shared, the targets are as varied as the degree of bombast. The German A22 climate activists Letzte Generation, for example, went so far as to sabotage fuel pipelines across the country. It ultimately abandoned that approach, owing to a lack of media coverage, opting to revert to road-blocking tactics similar to RPR. To their most fervid determined supporters, there is a near-religious zeal, embodied in the A22 mantra, “While there remains breath in our bodies we will not stop. This is our life now.” To their most committed disparagers, they are “climate cultists”, “hypocrites inflicting carnage” and “eco-loons”. 

The emergence of “supercharged climate activism” has spurred academic studies and inspired a new, controversial British bill, branded draconian and undemocratic by critics, cracking down on disruptive protests. A UK-based New Zealander, Morgan Trowland, was last week sentenced to prison for three years under the law. Trowland had been one of a pair of activists from Just Stop Oil, a member of the A22 network, who scaled the Queen Elizabeth II bridge east of London, shutting it to traffic for around 36 hours. 

A form of legislative crackdown is favoured in New Zealand, too, by National transport spokesperson Simeon Brown. He has placed in the ballot a member’s bill that would create a new criminal offence of obstructing State Highways and other major roads, tunnels and bridges.

Back in the main room at the RPR meeting, we’re introduced to the lead speaker. “She has been active in the peace and climate justice movements. She’s a mum. She’s a nana. She’s a community builder dedicated to non-violence and radical imagination.”

She begins: “I want to acknowledge the people of Pōneke who have been disrupted these past two weeks. I personally really don’t enjoy doing this. I feel somewhat dismayed that it’s come to this type of tactic, to be honest. But after all the petitions and the submissions and the marches that I’ve been on, emissions are still going up, and the window that we have to turn things around is pretty rapidly closing.”

The RPR demands are set out. “Pretty simple, really. Restoring a nationwide passenger rail system between Northland and Invercargill and lots of places in between. Our second demand is that the government makes the current half price [initiative] on public transport totally free and permanently free. But this campaign is actually also about something much bigger than rail and public transport … We sit on the road because we’re in a climate emergency.”

IPCC reports, peer-reviewed research and climate scientists’ warnings are all cited. It points overwhelmingly to the need for more profound and urgent action, she says. “But life is carrying on around us pretty much as normal, and it feels like no one’s panicking.” She says: “Organised collective action works. Organised, peaceful civil resistance can change history.” She points to women’s suffrage and New Zealand’s nuclear-free movement, to 1960s civil rights activism in the US.

The current cause, she argues, is one that could draw inspiration from the Freedom Riders, who “broke the world”. “Those 18 students inspired thousands of people and changed the course of history. Thirteen people, we have power. Don’t believe that we don’t. Facing the endgame for humanity, the climate crisis isn’t the same as what the Freedom Riders faced – they endured daily overt racial violence. But like them we can’t afford not to act.”

To RPR’s detractors, such comparisons are absurd, deluded, self-aggrandising; slogans from a group that takes extreme steps in the absence of mass participation. Simeon Brown has condemned “reckless idiots” who “put their cause back a long way”. The minister for transport, Michael Wood, agrees. He has condemned their tactics as “deplorable” and “idiotic”. Though he agreed to a meeting with the group after protest action subsided in December, that came to nothing. RPR spokesperson Rosemary Penwarden called it “congenial” but “unproductive”. 

Last week, the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, told media: “I just think whatever point they’re trying to make, they’re not making it. All they are doing is causing massive disruption to people [and] that comes with a financial cost often for people that can’t actually afford it. It’s just simply irresponsible and idiotic.”

Another critic is Tory Whanau, Wellington’s Green-endorsed mayor, elected with a strong climate-focused mandate. Following the Adelaide Road disruption on April 20, Whanau ruled out meeting with the group. “They have not moved forward in good faith, they have disrupted Wellingtonians, they have disrupted the lives of normal people instead of the government’s,” she told Newstalk ZB. “I need to emphasise, I support peaceful protest, but this is not the way to do it. I will not meet with them.” She, too, has called for tougher consequences for those who take part. 

More piercing than any politician’s censure, however, are those from the public. One bus passenger was reported to have remonstrated yesterday morning with protesters glued to the road on Glenmore Street, saying they were preventing him from visiting a daughter in hospital who was undergoing chemotherapy treatment.

If such sentiments risk tipping RPR, like similar groups around the world, into pariah status, they are not indifferent to perception. It underpins, for example, the choice of cause. Whether or not it might be a most practical game-changer on emissions, the restoration of passenger rail has an accommodating, nostalgic, folksy quality; a clarion call much less intimidating label than, say, “Extinction Rebellion”. “It’s important that our demands are popular,” the lead speaker says. “We know from polls that restoring passenger rail and free public transport are both extremely popular and people want this to happen.”

At root, however, the answer to all the objections above is a resolve that other options have been exhausted. The rallying cry to the virtual meeting is this: “We’re done with things like creating nice, polite petitions. We’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work fast enough. We’ve also done things like protest marches and occupations. We’ve learned that you can do it for a day and the government and the media might notice [then] the next day they just go right back to business as usual and forget about the thing you were asking. To win we need to be impossible to ignore.” 

RPR counted the October experience, she says, a roaring success. “By blocking motorways in Wellington six times over three weeks, we got more media coverage than any climate or environmental campaign has managed to get over a three-week period.” Sure, she says, “lots of people hate Restore Passenger Rail. But actually that doesn’t matter. We don’t need everybody to sit on the road. We just need a few people. We need you. We don’t need everyone to like us. All we need is to get our highly popular demands to be impossible to ignore.” 

Rounding out the pitch, she says: “We really hate doing it. We hate inconveniencing people. I’d personally rather be playing with my grandchildren or digging around in my garden or pretty much doing anything else. But I’m going to ask you now to think about the disruption caused to those hundreds of people that were late for work or appointments. Just think of the inconvenience to their lives and the stress they felt. That’s real. That matters. It really matters to me. Now think about the inconvenience of those hit by Cyclone Gabrielle … streets washed away, whole farms washed away, houses hit by landslides. Eleven people died.” 

She invokes other climate-accelerated or exacerbated weather events in New Zealand and around the world. “Let’s remember the people of Pakistan who lost everything last year, nearly 33 million displaced by climate induced flooding. Over 1,000 people died. So many others around the world have been suffering and dying due to the breakdown of our climate systems. Our disruption on the motorways really is nothing in comparison. But it’s just enough to show the seriousness of the crisis to be impossible to ignore.”

She says: “People will hate our methods that will agree with our message. And that’s the most important thing, right? It’s not to be liked. It’s to be effective. Because right now, everything we love is on the line. In 10 years’ time, maybe we’ll know whether we’ve gone past the climate tipping point. If we’ve failed, we’ll be living through the collapse of human civilisation. And we’ll know what part we played. 

“And I’ll leave you with one question. In 10 years, do you want to be one of those who will look back on this moment, wishing that they’d taken action? Or do you want to join us today?”

As the clock ticks past the hour, the floor is opened to others in the group. A handful explain how they ended up curious enough to join the meeting. A woman from Christchurch describes how she’d joined climate groups, “made the submissions and signed the hundreds of petitions, did the climate marches and went to rallies at parliament and drastically cut my own kind of emissions in terms of all the personal changes”.  

She says: “I’ve been doing this stuff for 20 years. Twenty years. And it just blows my mind that we’re not doing anything. This is the most well researched, well predicted, you know, absolute clusterfuck that humanity’s ever faced and we’re not listening to the people telling the truth.” She was a “rule follower” by nature. She worried about “the disruption we cause”.

But, she said, her voice cracking, “I feel like I’ve tried everything else. So that’s why I’m desperate enough to support this. I didn’t mean to get this emotional. But, yeah, I, my partner and I, decided not to have children because of the world that we’re bringing them in. But now we both feel like we have to do everything that we possibly can.”

After 10 seconds or so of silence, she adds: “Just for the record, I haven’t yet had the courage to actually sit on the road and get arrested. But I might just get desperate enough to, so thank you to all of those who have got that courage, because it’s not something that anyone takes lightly.”

Towards the end of the meeting, participants are invited to “come to Wellington and join in some action”, beginning with training for nonviolent direct action training. “Everyone who takes part in an action with Restore Passenger Rail has training to be safe,” she says, “And we keep each other safe. And we are 100% nonviolent, and present in what we’re doing.” There are other roles for people who aren’t up for that, she says.

A few days later an RPR volunteer telephones to follow up. She’s a supporter but her line of work means she’s “not arrestable”, so she helps in ways that don’t involve roads and glue. How does she feel about the backlash, especially from those who say they support the cause but consider the tactics counterproductive? “I’ve been grappling with that,” she says. “I’m not someone who likes pissing people off. But it’s got to the point, for me, where we have to piss people off. You know, these are gentle people. And I just so admire that they’re literally putting their bodies on the line.”

Tupua Urlich was five when he and his sister were put in a van and driven away from their distraught mother. What followed was years of multiple ‘family’ placements, isolation, shame and terrible abuse. Now in his 20s and a father, Tupua has become an advocate for the need for Māori to manage the care of their tamariki, without whānau being divided, and without interference from the state.

This article is part of The Quarter Million, exploring the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. Read the introduction here.

Illustrations by Izzy Joy Te Aho White.

Content warning: This feature describes physical and emotional violence, child abuse and neglect. If this is difficult for you and you would like some help, these services offer support and information: Shine domestic abuse services, free call 0508 744 633 (24/7, live webchat is also available); Hey Bro helpline – supporting men to be free from violence, 0800 HeyBro (439 276); Family violence information line to find out about local services or how to help someone else: 0800 456 450; Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 for mental health support from a trained counsellor; Youthline: 0800 376 633, free text: 234, email  talk@youthline.co.nz

Tēnā koutou katoa. Takitimu is the waka, Tamatea Arikinui is the eponymous ancestor, Ngāti Kahungunu is the tribe, Ngāi Te Rangikoianake is the subtribe, Kahurānaki is the mountain, Ngaruroro and Tukituki are my rivers, Poukawa is the lake, Te Hapuku is the eponymous ancestor, Kahurānaki is the marae, and my name is Tupua Urlich. 

The first five years of my life, honestly, were the best years of my childhood. Maybe we didn’t have much and there was alcohol and substance abuse and all sorts of things happening around us. But I can look back now as an adult and tell you I was far safer in those first five years of my life than I was after the state intervened. My whānau loved me, never hit me, I knew who my people were, I knew where I belonged. 

My mother is of Croatian heritage, she had a very religious upbringing and rebelled as a teenager. She experienced severe trauma throughout her life and unfortunately there was no healing for her and so that trauma was handed down through our whānau and is still very much in our lives today. 

My father, who was of Ngāti Kahungunu, also spent time in the social welfare homes and was subject to poor treatment from them. 

My mother had eight children in total, I’m the second youngest. My parents met at a rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, their joint trauma and life experiences had led them to that place. 

The day life changed for ever

The moment that the state intervened changed everything. It’s one of the hardest memories that I carry with me, it’s so vivid. There was a hui held at my mother’s home. These people were our whānau but I’d never met any of them, they were strangers to me and to my younger sister. One minute we’re just having a normal day at home, and next thing we have a van-load of people rocking up into the house and sitting down having a kōrero. My sister and I weren’t in the room, we were outside. 

Eventually we saw them packing bags into this van. We had no idea that we would be next to get in that van and we had no idea where we were going or what was going to happen. My mum was extremely upset to the point where, as we were backing out of the driveway, she just collapsed to the floor screaming. This obviously upset us, but my sister the most – I really felt for her. 

I remember that pure sense of not knowing what the hell was going on, sitting in a van for the six-hour drive back to Heretaunga. We didn’t know what was ahead of us, but we knew it wasn’t good because our mum was on the ground screaming and crying. When we arrived, it was a new environment with new people, so far away from what we’d known our whole lives.

The gates of hell

My sister and I stayed together for a little while, but eventually – they say it was due to my behaviour, it was too much to handle the both of us – we were split up, and that’s when the gates of hell really opened on my childhood. 

I left the whānau placement and was put in with non-whānau caregivers. That was the first time I endured physical abuse and it was close to on a daily basis. This was hard enough, but the thing that hurts the most was being ripped away from my whānau and having my other siblings still there at home; and then not long after that, having the last person I’d had in my life since day one – my sister – taken away and then I’m placed in with strangers who beat me nearly every single day. 

This CYFS caregiver went beyond physical abuse, he was cruel. How anyone could deem him safe or appropriate to take care of me, I don’t understand. I missed so many days of school due to the bumps and bruises and black eyes he left me with from as young as five years old. My pain turned to anger very very quickly, because no one was there, no one had my back, I’d been removed from my whānau, I’d been placed with strangers, and left there without being checked on for months and months. Very quick to separate me from my whānau, not so quick to ensure that they’d made the right move. 

The assault went far beyond just using his hands, he would use weapons, such as poles and wooden planks and whatever he had lying around. There’s one particular incident that never leaves my mind, when he hooked me in the head, a full-grown heavy-built man hooking a five-year-old in the head. I saw flashes, and that memory will never leave me. I was a child at the mercy of a monster.

There’s another really important incident that happened when I was living with this man. One day I’d just finished getting a hiding and I was crying on the floor. I was bleeding. The door opened, and he said, “Oh yeah, your dad’s dead by the way.” And the door closed behind him. And I’ll never forget that feeling. Even though my father hadn’t had an active role in my life to that point, I looked to him for protection, I looked to him as my source of justice, a person who would beat up these guys who were beating me up. And that was gone. 

Finally, after I was removed from this placement, I built up the courage to go to court for the abuse that this man put me through. And honestly, I wish I never did. I would have been seven at the time. Going into that court, I was terrified. Knowing that I was going into the same building as that man scared the life out of me. I spoke in that setting via CCTV and his defence lawyer used my emotions as a weapon against me. He said I was crying because I was lying. Not because I was terrified, but because I was dishonest. No one in the court stepped in to reprimand him for the way he spoke to me, not even the judge. 

I was not the only one taking this man to court for abuse. There were many other young people there. He was acquitted of all charges but one – that was for kicking me. He got 30 hours of community service for that. Thirty hours for months and months of abuse, fear, worry, pain, hopelessness. 

So, I’ve had no trust in any system, justice, police, or whatever it is, because I’ve known for a long time, I only have me to rely on. 

After that I didn’t have any stable placements, home was wherever it was. I’d go to school one day, the next thing you know I’m going to a different town, different people and a totally different sort of environment, without any sort of notice. I went to nine different schools in the 12 years I was in the state’s care.

Those so-called “family homes” are so far away from anything representing a whānau. I’d be living in places where I had bars on my window, alarms on my bedroom door, if I needed to get up to go to the bathroom, I’ve got 10 minutes otherwise that alarm’s going off. Groups tend to form in those places. The issue with me is that I’ve never trusted people, so I couldn’t form a group or join one of these gangs to look after myself. So, I always ended up pushing my limit, pushing it as far as I could or running away.

Something I feared the most when I started a new school was people finding out I was a CYFS kid, because I already struggled to make friends. And the only time you ever saw CYFS on the news it involved terrible things and I didn’t want people judging me on that. But every school that I went to, CYFs would show up wearing their bloody name tags with the CYFS logo, and that was it, game over, everybody knows you’re a CYFS kid.

My name is not Michael

One of my caregivers started calling me Michael. She believed my anger and bad behaviour came from the fact that, in her translation, Tupua was “evil and demonic”. She believed it was my name that was causing me to have such behaviours rather than the trauma of separation and abuse.

I’ll never forget going to school that day and the weird looks on people’s faces, the other tamariki in my classroom being told “he has a new name”. I remember not responding to it and being told off. My name is Tupua, my name is not Michael. My name was given to me, it’s not for anyone else to take. 

On the topic of names, nothing insults me more, as an adult who’s been through these systems, than seeing them slap beautiful kupu Māori onto ugly, oppressive, abusive Pākehā systems that are destroying our people. What gives them the right? Everybody knows Oranga Tamariki has a bad reputation, but when you hear Oranga Tamariki, what do you think? You think Māori. It’s time to respect our reo and stop using it to gain something. It makes the system look like a partnership with Māori, but I can tell you for a fact my tūpuna did not sign a treaty to have nothing more than an advisory role in the lives of our people. 

A system rife with racism

I can’t recall ever having a Māori social worker. To time travel a bit, at 15 years old I’d been self-harming quite a bit and had several attempts to end my own life. I was at the CYFS office in Takapuna because I didn’t know what to do. While I’m waiting there the social worker says to me, “Oh, you’re with youth justice?” I said, “No, I’m with care and protection.” And he said, “Oh, so future youth justice then.” And this was a care and protection social worker. 

The majority of the tamariki and rangatahi in this system are Māori and that’s not by mistake. You know, it’s a train track that the Crown has laid down for us and it’s so hard to get off. I’ve attended education centres with some bright young Māori men who just aren’t given the support they need, the support we’ve witnessed non-Māori receive. All of those guys made it into the gang life, into jail, all followed the train track the Crown laid down. 

We’ve just got to stop placing young people in police cells, locking us away and hoping that time will fix us. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve been into the cells a number of times over the years and I don’t say that with pride – none of those experiences were healthy. You’re placed in amongst adults who are often on drugs and aggressive. You have constant banging on the doors, you have swearing, you have abuse, you have a whole lot of anger, and you’re placing young people right in that environment. 

Instead of locking up young people suffering from pain, we need to start addressing that pain, and wrapping other things around them – love, care, nurturing, belonging. 

An ongoing struggle

The abuse, the hopelessness and the loneliness I suffered during my years in care was terrible. And when you top that off with no stability and a lack of direction, so many things suffer. My education, but most importantly, my mental health. Still to this day I live with anxiety without any known trigger. It’s just there. And whilst it’s hard to live with that, it’s hard seeing my babies have to deal with a father who has anxiety, who doesn’t always have the energy to play with them. I love my tamariki, but this system has taken something from them that you cannot deny.

I have a lack of trust, my relationships have suffered and so many people who were close to me have been hurt as a result of my childhood. It took me a long time to figure out how relationships work. 

We need to protect the next generation of tamariki from this beast that the Crown has created. The effects will be lifelong, there’s no questioning that. 

Stolen memories

I’m not as close as I’d like to be with my whānau. This is a result of the state alienating me from them. For four years of our childhood my sister and I didn’t have contact with each other. It wasn’t until I managed to find a caregiver who would actually pay me pocket money that I could buy post stamps and write letters and send money to my sister. I’d send lollies if I had extra money and buy phone cards and call her. That was the only way I could love my sister. But you can’t make up for those lost years. A letter is great, but it cannot replace memories and experiences together. 

Just because you leave the system, that barrier is still there. We are alienated from each other because the system did not value us as Māori tamariki belonging to a collective whānau, hapū and iwi. They throw these words around that they don’t understand and it shows in the treatment of our tamariki. As an adult, I’m still trying to develop relationships with whānau which should have been developed throughout my childhood.

We have to stop viewing children in isolation from their families. The wellbeing of our children should include the wellbeing of their whānau as a unit. If the whānau is not operating in a way that is safe or nurturing, do something about that, don’t just remove the children, because guess what, Crown, you don’t have a nurturing, safe, loving environment yourselves.

A sliver of light

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I started attending an alternative education centre and that’s where I was fortunate enough to meet a man, Peter Nordstrom. Pete recognised and understood the importance of tikanga and te reo. He’d witnessed generations of those who had lost their cultural identity. Recently, I had a kōrero with him and he said he saw that I had such a strong lack in my whānau base, so his mahi with me was establishing that through culture, through tikanga. At that time I was learning te reo, I was learning the history of my people. I remember feeling grounded, comfortable, and I understood I belonged to my iwi and I had something to be proud of. 

Peter Nordstrom knew that anti-social behaviour is simply a mixture of two things: detachment and anger. How do you heal that? You must address the detachment. We have a strong history, we have strong whakapapa, we have a lot to be proud of as Māori and it’s important to embrace that. Having belonging is so important for anybody. 

The only time I saw reference to te ao Māori outside of that education centre was the koru patterns frosted on the glass meeting rooms of the CYFS office, which wasn’t a nice place to be. That was my small instruction to things Māori. For a long time that’s all I had. 

Up until meeting Pete I’d only been to my marae once and that was to bury my father. 

Acknowledging our parents’ pain

On my father’s side, I’m the second generation who have been through state care. My father and all of his brothers are deceased. I’m the eldest in my direct whānau line and I’m 26 years of age. 

My father was killed. I’ve lost two uncles. One, who recently passed away, suffered a lot with schizophrenia because of his experiences. He opened up to me before his death. The result of abuse and trauma and what the state does to our people is present even in death. 

I know many people who have cut themselves off from their whānau, they live by themselves, they go it alone, they’ve grown up to believe their parents are bad people and so they don’t want to connect back to that. 

Something I’ve learned as I get older is that it’s important to acknowledge the pain of our parents, the lack of support, the trauma that they have had to carry with them. I don’t believe for a moment that my parents were bad people. I believe they were human and they were responding to a lifetime of pain without any healing.

A token redress

My experience with redress was unsatisfactory. I recall being interviewed by two Pākehā staff members about the abuse I’d endured while under state care. It was maybe six months before I heard back and an offer of compensation was presented. That was the worst time to come at me with something like that, because the full effect of the pain and the trauma hadn’t even come, I had no idea what I was in for. 

I didn’t have a lot of options available to me at that time, I was only 17 years old, I was self-harming. That was sort of a dangerous time because I already felt I didn’t belong in society, I couldn’t connect, I felt like an outsider in this world, living on a youth payment benefit that hardly gave me enough to pay rent. I was literally starving almost three days a week. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that what I’d signed and what I’d accepted was disrespectful to myself. The government needs to acknowledge that when children are left in abusive places, we suffer, we suffer hard, and we suffer for a long time. 

I’m lucky. I’ve met good people and formed a solid network – that has nothing to do with my time in the system. A lot of us aren’t that lucky, I had people behind me who had my back, who I can be real with. A lot of this is understanding that, you know, all this pain and the anxiety that I carry, it’s not my fault, I shouldn’t be embarrassed by it, I should not be ashamed, the Crown should be. It’s theirs. They are responsible.

My issue with counsellors is when I was younger, I was being abused and I went to school and spoke with the counsellor, told him that I was being abused, he notified the caregiver, so I went home to another hiding. So even as an adult, I have a problem talking to counsellors. I prefer to speak with people I know. 

Counselling is talking to a stranger. Our culture is not strange, it’s close. It’s part of who we are.

Hands off our tamariki

The best thing the state can do is keep their hands off our children. Allow Māori to exercise tino rangatiratanga. We don’t need the Crown to give us power, we’ve always had it. We need the crown to respect our power. 

My mahi with VOYCE – Whakarongo  Mai advocates to empower children’s voices to be heard to enable a pathway to cultural identity. We are about acknowledging our tamariki and rangatahi as collectors of whānau, hapū and iwi. 

We need to stop saying, “Yeah, we’ll have a Māori advisory board for this and that.” No, we’re not there to give advice. These are our people. We need more power and more say in the spaces that are responsible for our tamariki, for our rangatahi. 

Our tamariki do not belong to a Crown entity. Knowing who you are and where you come from, the values defined by tikanga, they are the foundations to develop strong, healthy, independent, ready young people. Compared to the system that we were raised in, it’s like day and night. 

Our people, our whānau know how to take care of us. We belong to them and if anyone were to have a say in my life and my upbringing I would hope it would be my iwi, not somebody who doesn’t know me from a bar of soap. 

Being Māori and raised in a system that’s determined to separate you from your culture is modern-day colonisation. My whakapapa is my identity. It’s my people, my place, it’s my history and, in the context of my childhood, whakapapa is where I should have been and who I should have been with.