Transracial Adoption: How This Practice Embraces or Deracinates Our Origins

Abstract

This is about whakapapa and the quest for whakapapa, a line of descent from one’s indigenous ancestry. I have experienced many aspects of child welfare having been transracially adopted, committed to care of the State and then fostered. I am of Māori and Pacific descent and have sought all my life for connections to an indigenous identity. This has not been an easy journey, hindered by restrictions of access to information about my biological families. My doctoral studies have aided this in bringing to the fore conversations about adoption and facing the difficulties of finding details about ancestry. State decision makers placed many Māori children into the care of non-Māori under closed adoption, oblivious to the importance of whakapapa with an adopted identity that had no placement with whakapapa or indigeneity. Connecting to culture and indigenous ways with the security of a cultural identity, should not be the sole task of an adoptee, nor one that is faced alone. Being transracially adopted and facing an identity journey with limited support is an emotional nightmare whereas consideration of how indigeneity can be reached in the healing and identity-wellbeing of our family’s should be included. Consideration of the differences between the traditional Māori practice of lore in caring for children within families, with the contrasting adoption practice where legal processes are laden with systemic and historic inequities. Consideration for our descendants is very important as it is our responsibility to ensure they are able to be grounded in culture and identity. This work seeks to continue healing for transracially adopted people and to advocate for authority to be returned to our own people for the care, welfare and the raising of our descendants.