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A REVIEW OF EVIDENCE: KIA PIKI TE ORA O TE TAITAMARIKI – THE NEW ZEALAND YOUTH SUICIDE PREVENTION STRATEGY contemporary Mäori suicide as stemming from a culturally-based suicidal pattern of behaviour. Bridgeman and Dyall note that symptoms like suicidal ideas (depression) were very uncommon in traditional Mäori culture. 56 There is evidence that supports a form of suicidal tradition in Mäori culture which has no contemporary equivalent. The existence of suicide in traditional Mäori culture may be seen as a challenge to cultural development as a means of addressing contemporary Mäori youth suicide. However, it is not proposed that Mäori youth assume all the cultural traditions of pre-colonised Mäori. That is impossible. It is proposed that there are positive elements of Mäori cultural practice that can be restored in contemporary settings, and that these may usefully serve as a protection for Mäori youth. There is confirmation of the importance of cultural identity in providing a form of psychological support for indigenous youth and a social infrastructure to belong to. 57 CULTURE AND HISTORY: COLONISATION AND ITS EFFECTS The idea that history affects the contemporary socio-cultural position and contemporary behaviour of youth is part of the analysis of suicide for indigenous peoples the world over. 58 One of the responses to enforced acculturation and colonisation for Mäori was the establishment of negative behaviours as coping mechanisms for the trauma of colonisation. These have been transmitted inter-generationally through role modelling so that over time adverse behaviours have become normalised. Histories of colonisation for indigenous peoples show the removal and breakdown of cultural institutions that would have once modified and controlled individual behaviour for the collective good and collective behaviour for individual good. 59 The removal of land, the forced impoverishment of Mäori, and the removal of Mäori control over Mäori destinies have had profound effects on Mäori in contemporary New Zealand society. 60 These are the facts of history that have been transported through whakapapa or genealogical relationships. The impact of colonisation for Mäori is transmitted to each new generation born into the circumstances created by it. In many respects, Mäori life scripts have been written before birth unless there is a conscious effort to change patterns of behaviours within whänau, hapü and iwi. Assimilation, in this report, is the process of absorbing one cultural group into another. 61 In other words, the recreation of Mäori as non-Mäori by removal of Mäori cultural traditions and patterns of behaviour, and the conversion of Mäori value and belief systems to replicate non-Mäori. 62 There is ample evidence to confirm that the policy of assimilation was vigorously pursued in New Zealand history, 63 as indeed it was pursued in other indigenous cultures at the time of colonisation and since then. 64 Colonisation is a political act. It assumes cultural superiority and the right to dominate. 65 As a process, it has to render indigenous perspectives and experiences as irrelevant and inferior in order to impose a new cultural belief system and political order. Those are the necessary conditions without which colonisation could not work. 66 The result of constructed relations of inferiority and dominance is that many Mäori struggle to maintain an identity as Mäori and to have access to the institutions of Mäori culture which provide strength and a source of psychological, spiritual, cultural and physical well-being for themselves, their families, and the broader social networks of which they are an integral part. 67 A further outcome is that Mäori realities are not considered to be valid when weighed up against dominant cultural realities. This continues to be relevant for Mäori researchers, clinicians and others where western science and medical research is often seen to be the search for ‘truth’ whereas the validity of Mäori research processes is treated as doubtful. Another example occurs in the practice of Western psychiatry. Mäori beliefs in a spiritual relationship with ancestors have often been interpreted as a symptom of mental illness despite active attempts to have Mäori world PAGE 14
views recognised in the practice of psychiatry in New Zealand. At best, the outcome is that selected Mäori patients are permitted access to Mäori traditional healers and elders, but this occurs alongside the ongoing administration of Western psychiatry and is often a hard won concession rather than an accepted part of effective treatment for many Mäori. At a practical level, inter-generational violence 68 and abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, 69 depression, 70 mental illness, 71 physical illness, rising youth suicide rates and Mäori youth mental health problems all point to symptoms of a traumatised culture. Although it is hard to measure the exact impact of colonisation on contemporary Mäori lives, the symptoms of Mäori cultural crisis speak volumes about the impact of colonisation on Mäori cultural institutions and Mäori in contemporary Mäori society. The following section considers some of the cultural and psycho-social outcomes of colonisation for Mäori and their relevance to understanding and preventing Mäori youth suicide. Some of the supporting literature for this analysis is derived from international research. The outcomes have been grouped into two main categories including collective cultural outcomes and individual psychological outcomes. COLLECTIVE CULTURAL OUTCOMES E kore te uku e piri ki te rino, ka whitikia e te rā ka ngāhoro Clay will not cling to iron. When the sun dries it out, it will fall away. 72 Mäori cannot be reconstructed as non-Mäori because Mäori are not and never can be anything but Mäori. The fact of whakapapa remains despite the significant challenges to it. Cultural breakdown and loss of identity as Maōri Loss of cultural identity as Mäori is the result of colonisation. First, the removal of land rendered Mäori unable to maintain cultural traditions which had for centuries been based around the identification with land as the source of spiritual and physical identity for individuals, whänau, hapü and iwi. 73 Second, the active process of assimilation rendered Mäori values, traditions, practices, beliefs and world views irrelevant to the values and beliefs of the dominant culture. It created an imposed inferiority through the denigration of Mäori identity. Mäori land was bought and sold to speed the colonisation of New Zealand. The buying and selling of Mäori land, by any means foul or fair, not only isolated Mäori from their essential identity as Mäori but it served to impoverish them. The death rate of Mäori soared alongside land alienation as the impact of spiritual, psychological, cultural and physical annihilation took its toll. 74 Social dislocation Urbanisation assisted the loss of Mäori cultural identity. Forced to move to the cities because of rural landlessness, Mäori moved away from the traditional tribal homelands to an urban base. By 1975 the bonds to land for 70% of the Mäori population were severed. A REVIEW OF EVIDENCE: KIA PIKI TE ORA O TE TAITAMARIKI – THE NEW ZEALAND YOUTH SUICIDE PREVENTION STRATEGY Further, the roles of whänau, hapü and iwi as the source of social support were undermined and Mäori became socially isolated in a new environment that was in direct opposition to the collective patterns of behaviour that had characterised Mäori social, cultural and political organisation. Loss of Māori authority and control Loss of control over the conditions of Mäori lives at the individual and collective levels is also a direct outcome of colonisation. The individualisation of land saw the breakdown of the collective authority of PAGE 15
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