The following blog is the first in a series of guest commentaries by scholars working on issues of interest and importance to Indigenous communities. The author of this commentary is
Dr Antje Deckert
who writes about the resurrection of eugenics as a policy (and practical) process for 'controlling' Māori.
The Commentary
In August 2015, the New Zealand Children’s
Commissioner reported that Child Youth & Families (CYF) recorded around 16,000
substantiated cases of child abuse in parental care, and 117 cases while
children are in CYF care.[i]
Most abuse cases in CYF care were of violent nature (physical or sexual abuse),
while statistics on abuse in parental care also include neglect and emotional
abuse.
Abuse statistics demonstrate that Māori children
make up 42% of violent abuse victims (49% of physically and 38% of sexually
abused children), while Pakeha children make up 33% of violent abuse victims (29%
of physically and 50% of sexually abused children). Compared to Pakeha children,
CYF considered twice as many Māori children to have been neglected or
emotionally abused, which leads to total abuse statistics of 49% for Māori
children, compared to 29% for Pakeha children. Therefore, any claim about the gross overrepresentation of Māori in
child abuse statistics depends significantly on which forms of abuse are included
in the analysis, and, arguably, which cultural paradigm defines neglect and
emotional abuse.
Over 16,000 abuse cases in a total
population of 1,161,387 children, means that 1.46% of Kiwi children suffer
abuse while in parental care, compared to 3.04% of children who are in CYF care.
However, this comparison neglects that most child abuse cases while in CYF care
were reportedly of a violent nature. When discounting cases of emotional abuse
and neglect in parental care, 0.29% of Kiwi children suffer violent abuse while
in parental care, compared to 3.04% of children in CYF care. Arguably, this
contradicts CYF’s mission statement that:
“A
fundamental expectation we have is that children who come into contact with CYF
should be better off as a result. […] CYF’s practice framework talks about
keeping children safe from abuse and neglect, providing them with secure care.”
Institutional abuse disproportionately
affects Māori children since they constitute around 55% of all children in CYF
care. However, reporting on abuse cases in CYF care lacks a breakdown by
ethnicity and indigeneity. Therefore, it is impossible to determine whether some
children may actually face a lower risk of abuse in parental care than in CYF’s
care.
Despite, or maybe because CYF fails to keep
Kiwi children safe, the government is now contemplating another avenue in order
to shed its responsibility for the prevention of child abuse – eugenics.
On 27th September 2015 NZ’s Minister
for Social Development, Anne Tolley, was interviewed on national radio. The
conversation revolved around the preliminary review, and recommended overhaul of
CYF. The review was triggered by the 2014 Glenn Inquiry which had identified major
shortcomings in CYF’s service delivery. Tolley was questioned about early
intervention strategies, and specifically whether CYF considers stopping
certain people from having (more) children. The Minister responded:
“That’s
very difficult for the State to do. I certainly think we should be providing
more family planning, more contraceptive advice to some of the families that we
know […]. I mean I know of cases that CYF have taken a sixth and seventh baby
from. […] That’s a big step when the State starts telling people [if they] can
have another child […]. That’s a huge step for the State to take. […] I’ll wait
and see what the panel reports. I expect that they will be saying that we
should get much faster contraceptive advice in. We should be offering […] tubal
ligations, all sorts of things.”
Since the Glenn Inquiry has revealed that
CYF staff are “bullies” who interact with clients in a judgmental, punitive and
disrespectful manner; one can only imagine how such contraceptive “advice” is
going to be packaged. Tolley’s suggestion inspired at least one Kiwi blogger to
consider possible delivery formats of such contraceptive advice, including
“positive incentives (pay them not to have more kids or get sterilised) [and]
negatives incentives (no further welfare if they have further children).” Since
Māori dominate the statistics of households with four or more children, this
eugenic crime prevention strategy would disproportionately be directed at women
of Māori descent.
However, this is not the first time that
a Minister of Social Development has considered eugenics as a form of crime
prevention. Paula Bennett, then in office, suggested as recently as in 2012 that
any children born to potentially abusive mothers could be forcibly removed, and
that the Family Court could have the power to prevent abusive women from having
any more children.
Throughout New Zealand history, eugenics
have provided middle-class Pakeha women with a discourse of social reform that
neatly tied into the ideals of colonialism and therefore enabled these
self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ to participate in the national debate about ‘racial
health’. They portrayed themselves as the ‘mothers of the race’ while
prescribing eugenic solutions for ‘deviant women’. Without hesitation, Tolley
is stepping into the footsteps of her ancestors.
Considering that around 3% of Kiwi children
in CYF care suffer violent abuse compared to 0.3% of children in parental care,
the first Family Court order for tubal ligation should be addressed to the
State. Especially because the State is unable to act as a role model in keeping
children safe from abuse, the government should scrutinise both its ethical stance , and historical practices of abuse before directing eugenic solutions disguised as ‘early intervention strategies’
at its citizens, and disproportionately so at Indigenous women.
References
Children’s Commissioner (2015). State of
Care: What we learnt from monitoring Child Youth and Family. Retrieved from http://www.occ.org.nz/assets/Publications/OCC-State-of-Care-2015.pdf
Farrar, D. (2015, September 28). How to
encourage bad parents to stop having kids. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz
George, P. (2015, September 28). Why did
Tolley talk about contraception? [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://yournz.org
Merchant, R. S. (2010). Who are abusing
our children? An exploratory study on reflections on child abuse by media
comments [MA thesis]. Massey University: New Zealand. Retrieved from http://mro.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10179/1612/02_whole.pdf?sequence=2
Ministry of Social Development (2015).
Modernising Child Youth and Family: Expert panel interim report. Retrieved from
https://www.msd.govt.nz/documents/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/cyf-modernisation/interim-report-expert-panel.pdf
Raumati, G. H. (2009). “Warrior genes”
and the disease of being Māori. MAI
Review, 2, 1-11.
Statistics New Zealand (2013). Quick Stats on Māori. Available from
www.stats.govt.nz
Wanhalla, A. (2007). To ‘better the
breed of men’: Women and eugenics in New Zealand, 1900-1935. Women’s History Review, 16, 163-182.
Wynd, D. (2013). Child abuse: An analysis of Child Youth and Family data. Auckland:
Child Poverty Action Group.
[i] For the purposes of this analysis, it is assumed that abuse
statistics affect the age group of 0-19 year olds, since CYF does not provide
demographic details.
No comments:
Post a Comment