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Download AudioThere’s a push to reform the Adoption Act so it is more open to Māori traditional practices.
Professor Mark Heneghan from the University of Auckland law faculty says New Zealand’s adoption law was introduced in the 1950s when there was a perception in society that children born outside of a formal marriage were illegitimate.
That law excluded whāngai adoptions, where children for whatever reason are placed within the wider whānau.
There was some change with the 1985 Adult Adoption Information Act, where people could apply to get information about their birth parents, but the law is out of step with the way adoption has evolved to embrace Māori practices.
“Adoptions are more open, even though the Act doesn’t allow for that. People choose the people they want to adopt their child and they normally keep contact with them so all those things need to be taken into account. Adoption was really a pretty harsh way of legitimising a child. It took us until 1969 until we passed the Status of Children Act so children become legitimate, and the reason for legitimacy was to protect the landowners – if the son went off and had a child they had no claim so it was to protect the wealthy, basically, like a lot of law is unfortunately,” Professor Heneghan says.
Professor Heneghan says some scholars such as the late Moana Jackson have argued for a separate whāngai Māori act so the process is not interfered with by people who don’t understand the tikanga.
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