Edited by Carmel Bird
Marked by a cross drawn in ink at about the place where her navel would be, the child stands in the centre of the group of six tiny girls. Her companions look shyly, sadly, at the camera; but her eyes are downcast. She seems to be oblivious, or at least forgetful, of the photographer, concentrating on a ball that she cradles at shoulder level. This child, with her high-domed forehead and gently pouting upper lip, is an orphan among orphans, Australian children of mixed race.
The person who made the cross has written underneath the picture: “I like the little girl in centre of group, but if taken by anyone else, any of the others would do, as long as they are strong”.
The orphanage was in Darwin, and the photograph of the children appeared in a newspaper in the 1930s, because the Minister for the Interior was appealing for people in Melbourne and Sydney to take the children in, to ‘rescue them from becoming outcasts’. This was part of a long-term government plan to assimilate Indigenous people into the dominant white community by removing the children from their families at as young an age as possible, preferably at birth, cutting them off from their own place, language, and customs, and thereby somehow bleaching aboriginality from Australian society.
17 stories are recorded here, most of them exactly as they were told to the Inquiry.
You can join our library and get books and DVDs out for Free!
Also in our library is the movie ‘Rabbit Proof Fence‘ which tells the story of three girls who escaped a religious reformatory in Australia in the 1930’s, hoping to walk 1500 miles back to their tribal home.
Initially in Aotearoa New Zealand, te reo was widely spoken by the Europeans, particularly in interaction with Māori, and by both Maori and European children. By the mid 1860’s, the Crown introduced legislation which began to enforce the growing assimilation attitude, with the Colonisers wanting Māori to be absorbed into the new colonial culture, and so the wearing away of the Māori people began. Māori land was removed, stolen, and its use restricted by the Crown. Schooling was enforced, first in te reo for Māori, but by 1910, in English only. Māori populations dwindled due to introduced diseases, war, and substandard living conditions. Urbanisation and the development of New Zealand’s independent economy after World War Two led to Māori leaving their rural homes, marae and whānau to work in cities. All of these factors greatly contributed to the decline of the Māori language.
Māori language surveys, carried out by Te Puni Kōkiri (Ministry of Māori Development) and Statistics New Zealand, seem to show that language levels are currently being retained, although this level is still less than ideal. Unfortunately though, there are few proficient speakers, with most of them aged over 50. Currently the focus is on the education sector but the use of language outside of school grounds is not controlled, and the Act cannot contribute to the production of fluent speakers, only regulate the level and quality of language (like how we learn grammar in English schools, to increase the diversity and skills of language we have).
The inaugural Pacific Youth Festival was a phenomenal gathering. Held in Tahiti from the 17th to 22 July 2006, it was a veritable showcase of cultural diversity, exchange, and open-minded enquiry. It was a vehicle for celebration, learning and sharing, and as ever with new learning, there was the challenge of stepping out of old comfort zones and seeing the world in a new light.
I boarded the tiny plane in Westport on July 14, nervous and unprepared. I hadn’t even read half of the information we’d been sent. I was excited to finally get a chance to go overseas, but by this stage I had convinced myself it was going to be terrible. They wouldn’t feed me enough (I like food), the people would be super brainy and super snobbish (how could a little West Coast girl ever compete?), not to mention old (I’m only 18 and the people going were aged from 16-30), and I’d get lost (the amount of youth going to the festival was more than the population of my entire town)!
I was immediately welcomed by the 16 other New Zealanders at our one-day workshop in Auckland on the 15th (they weren’t mean after all). And I soon realised I was the only one who was feeling nervous and ill-prepared. And I was one of the youngest people there, but it never became an issue. We all came from different backgrounds, and different parts of the country, but here we were all equal.
Another highlight was meeting three Moriori youth from New Zealand. I never learned anything about the Moriori people at school. All I knew was something about “the Moriori being eaten by the Māori”… It was interesting learning about how the Moriori were still very much alive and the efforts being made to resurrect their language and culture. Their fight to rectify the shame people felt in being identified as Moriori (even more than Māori, Moriori people in the past were looked down upon and forced to hide or forget their culture) was incredibly inspiring.
Ngā iwi e, Ngā iwi e
On the last night of the inaugural Pacific Youth Festival held in Tahiti between 17 and 22 July, it was revived as ninety New Caledonians cheered the end of the festival and sung for a new day in the fight for self-determination in the Pacific. They sang for freedom, their banner bearing the words “Delegation of New Caledonia” (a reminder to the festival of their refusal to march under the French flag). The song, echoing in the outdoor stadium as the sun went down over the harbour of Pape’ete, and the warm Pacific wind stirred the Kanaky flags they carried in their hands and wore around their necks.
On Saturday morning Charmaine and I prepared the hall for the around one hundred youth and interested observers, including two members of the French Polynesian Assembly, who came to discuss colonisation and decolonisation. It turned into a very successful forum and we were able to put colonisation back on the agenda of the festival. Samoans came to talk about their dark past at the hands of colonial New Zealand; Kanaky, Maohi, Cook Islanders, Palauans came to discuss their islands’ experiences; Australians came to vent their frustration that there was only one aboriginal in their delegation, Papua New Guineans remembered their brothers and sisters in West Papua, who the government had warned them not to talk about at the Youth Festival. The pain of the Pacific peoples flowed through the room, the hurt, frustration and anger at last beginning to be discussed in an open way instead of being swept under the rug.
Over 1000 young people aged 16-30 attended the first Pacific Youth Festival held in Pape’ete in Tahiti from 17-22 July 2006. Aotearoa NZ had a delegation of 16 people (from the North and South islands, and the Chathams) , 8 of whom were selected by Just Focus to participate at our first international event.
“I’ve got a new awareness of colonisation issues in Aotearoa NZ, having seen colonisation through a French lens in the Pacific region”
Race relations have been in need of improvement throughout the history of our country. Since Europeans first began to colonise New Zealand, links between Māori and Pākehā have often been the topic of national debate. National party leader Dr Don Brash asked voters in Feb 2004 — What sort of nation do we want to build’? What we want to build is a society that is fused as one while respecting the unique cultures that it comprises of; a nation with equal responsibilities, rights and opportunities for all. Before we can reach that unity however, we need to explore how we can improve our race relations.