Whanau - Christchurch Health Study Says Cultural Identity May be Related to Violence and Abuse

It’s about whanau

Ruth Laugesen – The Listener

10th October, 2009

The rollcall of misery is a familiar one. Lillybing. The Kahui twins. Nia Glassie. Every few weeks a fresh name is added to the list of children who have died at the hands of parents or caregivers. Family violence is found everywhere, but with greater frequency in Maori homes. Slowly, a movement is gathering within Maoridom to tackle that fact.

 “We know we have a huge job ahead of us, but we have to start now. We can’t just live with the fact abuse is there, we have to do something,” says Hone Kaa, a member of the Maori reference group advising the Government’s taskforce on family violence.

Around the country Maori community groups are attempting to come up with ways to achieve change in Maori families. Maori identity is a foundation stone for most of these efforts.

“The home must be restored as a place of safety and love, where healthy partnerships are the norm. Reclaiming tikanga, fostering pride and affirming identity will be the foundation for change,” says the February 2009 national Maori action plan on family violence, E Tu Whanau Ora.

But new research from the long-­running Christchurch Health and Development Study is questioning whether Maori identity is a sound base on which to build an anti-violence movement.

It comes at a time when interventions founded on Maori identity are in the ascendancy because of the growing political power of Maori. With the Maori Party’s Tariana Turia as Associate Minister of Social Development, work is under way to change delivery of social services to Maori to a more “whanau-centred” model called Whanau Ora. What this will mean in practice is still unclear, but by next year’s Budget up to $1 billion in social funding could be grouped together to funnel through Maori social services providers, including for family violence initiatives.

Published in the latest Social Policy Journal, the Christchurch School of Medicine study attempts to tease out whether strong Maori identity is, in fact, a protective factor against family violence. 

The study is part of a longitudinal project that has followed over 1200 Christchurch children, 

114 of whom are Maori, from their birth in 1977. Aged 21 at the time of the latest research, the young people were asked about violence and abuse in their homes as they grew up.

The study found those who identified as Maori reported much higher rates of physical violence in their homes. Harsh and abusive physical punishment was almost three times as common, reported by 14% of Maori subjects, compared with 5.5% of those who identified as non-Maori. Severe inter-parental violence was also triple that experienced by the non-Maori children (at 21% v 7%). 

The findings chime with earlier research that found Maori boys are six times as likely to die or suffer serious injury from assault than non-Maori, and that Maori girls are three times as likely.

But one surprise in the study was there was little difference in the sexual abuse rates between Maori and non-Maori. “That’s novel and quite refreshing, because previous research has found higher rates of sexual abuse for Maori,” says Professor David Fergusson, who heads the Christchurch study.

The researchers then attempted to uncover how much of a role poverty and family dysfunction played in violent Maori homes. One explanation for the high rates of maltreatment of Maori children is thought to be because Maori families are over-represented among the country’s poorest, and social deprivation is strongly linked to child maltreatment.

Another leading explanation is family adversity. Symptoms of poorly functioning families include parental drug and alcohol abuse, criminality, loose or unstable family structures, teen parenting, sole parenting and frequent changes of care­givers for the child. Each of these factors is associated with child maltreatment. Previous research has found Maori have higher rates of these symptoms.

To estimate how much of the family violence might be due to Maori over-representation among poor and dysfunctional families, results were adjusted to even out these effects. The research found high rates of Maori poverty and family dysfunction were huge drivers of child maltreatment. 

After the adjustments for poverty and family dysfunction, severe physical punishment and severe inter-parental violence fell from three times non-Maori levels to one-and-a-half times.

That meant half of the increased risk of violence was due to poverty and family factors.

“We found that much of the high risk related to Maori is really related to social disadvantage and related factors. Maori have got a lot of troubles: they’re poorer, they’ve got more alcohol problems, more illicit drug use, more criminal offending, there are more changes of parents and so forth. It shows the importance of addressing both disparity and family functioning. Any policy that is going to succeed is going to have to address these areas,” says Fergusson.

But that leaves the other half of the elevated risk for Maori unaccounted for. The missing half may be because of wrong ­calculations or an “x” factor in Maori child abuse that is about being Maori.

The researchers then moved on to more contentious ground by attempting to gauge the role of a strong Maori identity by dividing the children into those who identified themselves as “sole Maori” and those who said they were “Maori and other”. The “sole Maori” also had 

higher rates of participation in Maori cultural activities and greater knowledge of the language and were more likely to listen to iwi radio stations.

They also reported much higher rates of violence in their homes, experiencing one-and-a-half times as much severe physical punishment and more than twice as much inter-parental violence as part-Maori. However, the “sole Maori” had lower rates of the most serious types of sexual abuse than either non-Maori or part-Maori.

“The results suggest that sole Maori identity may be a risk factor for exposure to physical child abuse and inter-parental violence,” says the research paper.

Lead author and Maori researcher Dannette Marie goes on to ask whether strengthening Maori identity and links with traditional culture will help eradicate violence in Maori families. “These findings pose a challenge to current policies aimed at reducing the over-representation of Maori children in rates of child maltreatment, which emphasise ‘identity interventions’ that are not evidence-based and are largely ideologically driven,” says the paper.

Fergusson is apprehensive about how Maori academics and practitioners working in the field of family violence will receive the research. He stresses that just one small group of Maori children had been studied, in one part of the country. “We see this research as being exploratory, not definitive,” he says.

But the research raises questions, he says, about the view in parts of Maoridom that “if Maori were left alone, and they were to restore their culture back to what it was, that this would mitigate the problem. This research does not support that idea. It says that Maori cultural identity, in fact, might increase those risks rather than decrease the risks. It could be a blind alley.”

However, Di Grennell, executive director of Northland family violence prevention initiative Amokura, says there were “considerable weaknesses” in the research in how “identity interventions” were defined by the researchers. Programmes to address family violence 

were not simply about restoring Maori culture. Instead, the culture was there in tandem with other treatment elements, making participants more comfortable and bringing increased attendance.

“Kaupapa Maori interventions and clinical interventions are not oppositional at all,” she says. Grennell says the research underscored the major importance of socio-economic disparity and family factors in family violence. But she says no one seems to want to talk about making society more economically equal. “Every piece of research that comes out indicates that addressing socio-economic disparity would make a huge difference, but it’s very difficult to get anyone interested in doing something about that.”

Anton Blank, director of Maori child advocacy group Te Kahui Mana Ririki, welcomes the research. He says it confirms there is something different about Maori. The trust was formed as a result of a Maori child abuse summit convened in late 2007 the wake of Nia Glassie’s death.

“The research hits the nail on the head by looking specifically at Maori ethnicity. My view is, yes, socio-economic factors can explain some of it, but not all of it. There is something about our experience that makes our kids vulnerable. And I think it’s about being indigenous; our situation reflects the experience of indigenous people across the world.

What is it about being indigenous?

“When you take people’s land and language away from them, you rob them of their identity and the damage is almost irreparable. So there’s massive grief attached to the Maori experience and we play that grief out in lots of different ways. A high level of family violence is very common among indigenous peoples. Family violence is an expression of that grief.”

If an overpowering sense of grief is indeed the submerged obstacle to tackling family violence, then how to get past it? For Blank, it will mean nothing less than Maori letting go of their anger.

“As a people, we reflect on colonisation a lot, but there’s a point at which you have to say we accept that’s happened and we have to move forward. We have to move beyond grievance. That’s a big ask, but I think that’s the key to it. And there’s been a shift and I think we are moving into that beyond-grievance phase of our development. A lot of the anger has gone.”

But Blank doesn’t agree that programmes founded on Maori identity might not work. He says his group and others are seeking to actively change the culture by reaching back to older parts of Maori culture to rediscover more caring forms of parenting.

“The Maori culture is rich with principles that promote really loving and good parenting. The early missionaries, in fact, considered our children were overindulged.”

His group is using Maori tikanga as an inspiration to teach parents that children are essentially godly and perfect, rather than essentially naughty and in need of correction.

Massey University professor of Maori research and development Mason Durie says there is no single cause behind either violence or sexual abuse. And because the reasons are multi-faceted, addressing the problem also needs to be multi-faceted.

“There ­is no single approach that will make a ­significant difference.”

Durie says in his experience with Maori health and education and whanau development, the programmes are never solely aimed at increasing cultural knowledge and skills. Instead, culture is used as a way of engaging more successfully with individuals and families.

“Maori participation in early childhood education and tertiary education or in health programmes would not have reached the heights it has if cultural frameworks such as kohanga reo had not been employed. The experience of the past 25 years is where a Maori cultural framework has been used; it has led to some quite major transformations.”

The Christchurch research would provide useful additional knowledge about complex problems. 

But dismissing ‘identity interventions’ without first examining the scope of those interventions, or their proven value in a wide range of social and economic programmes, could be a misleading conclusion. 

And detaching socio-economic circumstances from culture is an academic exercise that tends to undervalue the close links between the two variables.”

Durie says there are also limitations in the study’s handling of Maori identity. Dividing Maori subjects into “sole Maori” and “Maori and other” was also of limited value, as the reasons someone might choose to call themselves “sole Maori” were diverse. Some chose that identity because of political conviction, as a statement of ethnic pride. But others who were more secure  in their cultural identity would happily acknowledge their diverse ancestry, and not choose the “sole Maori” category. “Multiple affiliations do not necessarily mean a lack of cultural identity in ‘Maori’ or the ‘other’ identities,” he says.

For Hone Kaa, also chairman of Te Kahui Mana Ririki, the journey to tackle the distinctively  Maori element of child maltreatment has begun. “We don’t know what the end product will be. Our hope is that the end product will be a better Maori, a better human being. It’s hard work, it’s small, but it’s got its beginnings.”