February 09, 2018
New whakapapa to cope with urban migration
The author of a new book on Maori urban migration says Maori have had to build new collectives to cope with living away from their tribal base.
Brad Haami from Ngati Awa says after living in Auckland for 30 years he thought he should fund out how Maori switched from being a predominantly rural to an urban based people within a couple of decades in the 1950s and 60s.
He uses family profiles to tell the wider story, and the effects of government policies like assimilation and pepper-potting, which were aimed at breaking down tribalism by housing Maori apart from each other.
He says while there was a lot of loneliness as people struggled to cope away from their wider whanau, there was also resilience.
"They created new ways of keeping the collective alive in work groups and sports teams. If you look at west Auckland we know most of the families who live in all or our neighbourhoods but it's more pan-tribal and as one of the profiles said it's now today they see it as a community whakapapa and that whakapapa extends to many families that are not of their own tribe," Mr Haami says.
Urban Maori: The Second Great Migration by Bradford Haami is published by Oratia Media.
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