E hara taku toa I te takitahi. Te toa takitini
My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective
When we gave our opening at the Faith-based Phase 1 Hearing of the Abuse in Care Royal Commission on November the 30th, 2020, we used another Māori aphorism to talk about the critical importance of inclusiveness and the need to combine different threads to make a stronger whole:
Kotahi te kōhao o te ngira ka kuhu mai: te miro mā, te miro pango, te miro whero
The needle has only one eye through which pass the white, black and red threads
The threads combined are far stronger than the individual threads and together bind us as a nation of diverse cultures and ethnicities.
Holistic redress (Puretumu torowhānui) promised by The Abuse in Care Royal Commission is seen as the only just option to replace the broken redress of State and Faith-based systems (Puretumu pakaru) revealed by victim-survivors, their supporters and the perpetrating institutions themselves.
This holistic redress is an opportunity to be inclusive and by its very nature, has to be. It deals with the whole and to do so, must be non-discriminatory and respectful of the mana of everyone.
It is an opportunity to reimagine ancestral lines of descent, of whakapapa, as one’s networked connection to an evolving life force or in Dame Anne Salmond’s view “[abandon] notions of them versus us (Dualism) and [embrace] the complex systems that can strengthen us as a people. Rather than Māori vs non-Māori, could ancestral ideas of lines of descent [be]… strands that remain distinct, while being woven together to create a nation.”
The Anglican Archbishop Don Tamihere in his draft principles of redress in relation to Mahi Tukino or the work related to those abused, describes Mātauranga as “a Māori worldview, grounded in principles such as whanaungatanga (connection) and manaakitanga (upholding the mana of all).
Kia whakamana, kia arohatia i te tangata
Through love, to acknowledge, maintain, and restore the mana and tapu of survivors and all affected by mahi tukino
Connection, not separation, partnership, togetherness
The criminal assault on children, most egregiously by sexual assault and electric convulsive torture, happened to New Zealand children regardless of their gender or ethnicity and in many instances, shattered whakapapa and extinguished or stunted the life essence of the victim-survivor in a ghastly fashion.
This grim reality has reverberated and continues to reverberate through the generations and into the present day.
It has touched every New Zealander directly or indirectly and continues to be a deeply shameful part of the New Zealand experience as a nation.
Meng Foon, the Race Relations Commissioner, reminds us as New Zealanders, ‘what unites us is stronger than what divides us‘.
A majority of victim survivors who have reported to this Royal Commission are non- Māori as non- Māori (European, Asian, Pasifika) make up the great majority of the population. Their whakapapa and their pain must be woven into any solution sought to address this horror in a fully non-discriminatory, non-exclusionary, fully inclusive manner.
Any redress that excludes the majority is clearly not holistic redress.
There must be partnership and respect for these different threads as we weave a better more mature nation that accepts we must do far better than what we have done in the past and avoid repeating this past.
We have all passed through the eye of the same needle. We now need to build a better future.
Together.
E hara taku toa I te takitahi. Te toa takitini
My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective