In this, the 21st episode of A View from Afar for 2022 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning analyse the notion, and perhaps the reality, of Trumpism beyond Trump.

In earlier episodes, Paul and Selwyn have examined how Trumpism, and even Bannonism, has been exported as a cult, a cultural political movement, around the world. And, we gave detailed examples of how it manifests itself in countries as untypical comparatively as New Zealand and Brazil.

And in this episode, Paul and Selwyn deep dive into this notion – that while Brazil’s out-going right-populist president Bolsonaro was narrowly defeated by his left-positioned rival Lula, there’s a risk that Brazil’s version of Trumpism will live on well after Bolsonaro’s electoral defeats at the ballot-box and enforce a formidable impediment to their successor’s policies.

And in addition, they examine what to expect from the United States’ mid-term elections. Will the GOP’s Trump endorsed candidates assist in removing a Democratic Party majority in the US Senate?

And finally, they explore the Israel elections and whether Benjamin Netanyahu will return to dominating Israel’s political sphere.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact while they are live with questions and comments. They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A Papuan woman politician has warned Indonesian security forces against restricting women from selling noken — traditional string bags — and other accessories displaying the banned Morning Star flag design at the Papuan National Games (PON XX) venue in Jayapura.

Orpa Nari, a Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP) member of the Women Workgroup, said the police should not be afraid of “a pattern”.

“It’s just a pattern,” she said. “None of these mamas [Papuan women] weave the pattern as a way to go against the state.

“If anything, it’s our identity as Papuans,” Nari told the Papuan newspaper Tabloid Jubi.

Previously, the security forces reportedly forbade Papuan women from selling any Morning Star-patterned accessories during the Games as they were considered a resistance symbol against the Indonesian state.

Nari said that Papuan women had been making noken with various patterns — including the Morning Star — for a long time, even before the National Games.

“It has nothing to do with the Games event. It’s common to find accessories with the Morning Star design made by Papuan women.

“It’s simply a part of their identity that cannot be forgotten and let go,” she said.

Supported their families
Nari added that these women had supported their families through knitting and making accessories.

“It’s their livelihood. We Papuans know it by heart,” she said.

MRP chair Timotius Murib said he had received information that residents and supporters wearing clothes and accessories with the Morning Star pattern were not allowed to enter the National Games venue

“Some people who wore bracelets or clothes with the Morning Star pattern were forbidden from watching the Games.

“These accessories are common and not just worn by native Papuans,” said Murib.

Murib hoped that the security forces would not overreact to the phenomenon.

“Don’t overdo it, it’s just an accessory. Let’s create a good atmosphere during the PON XX and make it a successful event,” he said.

The two-week-long Games end on Friday.

Yance Wenda is a Tabloid Jubi reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The umbrella term Pacific Islander or Polynesian has been criticised as degrading and insensitive.

Researcher Dr Seini Taufa, who is a New Zealand-born Tongan, said the names were not indigenous terms and were insulting.

Dr Taufa is research lead for Moana Research and Senior Pacific Advisor for the Growing up in New Zealand Longitudinal Study.

She has given evidence to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care’s Pacific inquiry being held in South Auckland.

Dr Taufa quoted author Albert Wendt:

”I am called a Pacific Islander when I arrive at Auckland Airport. Elsewhere I am Samoan.”

Dr Taufa said lumping everyone together robbed people of their true identity.

‘Constructed by palagi’
”We did not name ourselves Pacific Islanders, we did not name ourselves Polynesian. These are terms that were constructed by palagi within a colonial context.”

She said preconceived ideas around being called a Pacific Islander or Polynesian influenced the way Pacific people self identify.

”While the umbrella term Pacific is useful when making global comparisons, it’s futile when applied to actual people and groups of people who consider themselves not Pacific or Polynesian, but Samoan, Tongans, Fijians, Cook Islanders and so on.”

Dr Taufa said that in a New Zealand context Pacific people had been marked for as long as they had settled in Aotearoa whereby the Pacific embodiment was interpreted differently from context to context.

”On the rugby field and among the All Blacks, Pacific male bodies are celebrated. In a crime and punishment context, Pacific male bodies are associated with racist discourses of violence, rape, gangs, fear and danger,” she said.

”Pacific people thus construct their identities and live their lives at the intersection of positive histories, language and culture and negative and stereotypical ideas and beliefs produced by the dominant group.”

Dr Taufa said many abuse survivors experienced racism and discrimination first hand.

Told he wasn’t Samoan
“One young man asked about his ethnic background responded with Samoan, but was told by someone in authority that he wasn’t, as he was born in New Zealand.

”As a young boy who relates being Samoan to Christianity, to family and to his mother, he is forced to adopt an identity that doesn’t belong to him — a New Zealander — and, with it, the trauma of what he was exposed to in state care as a New Zealander.”

She said it spoke to the power held by a dominant group.

”To label another with little consideration of the detrimental nature of such actions.”

Dr Taufa said the importance of ones ethnicity should never be doubted.

”I hope that it raises questions amongst those in the system to be more cautious of how they record, how they document and the fact that it can and has, through our survivor voices, had an impact on their well being.”

Dr Taufa said there were inadequacies of ethnic classification and data collection in New Zealand, both past and present.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

The documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears has won the Grand Prix du Jury at Tahiti’s FIFO (Festival International du Film Documentaire Océanien).

Produced and written by senior lecturer in communication studies Jim Marbrook at Auckland University of Technology and his sister Anna Marbrook (who directed the film), it debuted at Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2020, where it received outstanding reviews and box office sell-outs.

The documentary also made the stuff.co.nz top 10 films of 2020 list. AUT students formed part of the crew for some of the Auckland portions of the shoot.

At the prizegiving ceremony, jury member Julia Overton, a leading figure in Australian film and television, described Loimata as “a film that was really well directed . . . on an
important subject: childhood trauma”.

She added: “Our congratulations to the whole team who presented this family’s story with so much compassion.”

Jury member Doc Edge director Alex Lee said: “The film’s narrative is superbly told, giving us a personal connection with the subject, Ema. We are taken into her world where she confronts issues of culture, family, the tradition of wayfaring, sexual abuse, identity, life and death.

“While her mortality is urgent and pressing, the film enables us to pause and reflect as Ema navigates these issue. This is an excellent example of skilled filmmaking and a feature-length theatrical Pasifika documentary which the world needs to view, indicative of the treasure trove of content of our region rarely seen and funded internationally.”

Healing pathway
Director/producer Anna Marbrook said: “We are so thrilled and honoured to be among such an amazing selection of films in competition. This award is a tribute to the protagonist of the film Lilo Ema Siope and her dedication in forging a healing pathway for her extraordinary family – a pathway deeply rooted in her culture, history and philosophy.

“Tahiti is hugely significant in voyaging kaupapa so to win an award there dignifies both our film and Ema’s legacy as a voyaging captain and waka builder.”

Producer Jim Marbrook said: “This is another vital stepping stone that helps us take our film out into the world and also deeper into the Pacific region. We set out to make a documentary that was both cinematic and intimate and the reactions to the screenings and this prize have vindicated our creative choices.

“It was a complex movie to produce because the material was so sensitive.”

Loimata had its television debut on Waitangi Day on Māori Television and is available to watch on their on demand website for the next two months.

Loimata, The Sweetest Tears takes the viewer on an emotional healing journey with extraordinary ocean-going waka captain, Lilo Ema Siope.

The film is an intimate exploration of a family shattered by shame working courageously to liberate themselves from the shackles of the past. A journey of courage, tears, laughter and above all, unconditional love.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

What were you doing during the foreshore and seabed hīkoi in 2004?

I wish I could say I was at the protest, gripping the hem of Nana’s dress while she raised her fist in the air, marching for sovereignty, echoing the cries of our tīpuna who were fighting for the very same thing on the very same whenua all those years ago.

But this wasn’t the reality for me and for so many other urban Māori who grew up disconnected from our culture. I was living in Avondale, Auckland and watched the protest unfold on the news. Mum was still at work and I was eating noodles, my homework spread out on the dinner table.

A sea of black and white flags flying in the air came on the TV. I remember a wave of emotion coming over me from seeing the crowds of brown faces who looked like me, who looked like my mum, my nana.

I wish I could say it was a feeling of pride but it wasn’t. I felt whakamā – a word every Māori knows because it is an emotion that has been forced upon us to feel inherently bad for who we are.

The news coverage of the foreshore and seabed told me Māori were greedy, wanted special privileges, were angry over nothing and were trying to ban the public from beaches. It didn’t speak of Māori relationship to the land, the history of land confiscation, the fight for sovereignty or the issues that have come from colonisation and dispossession.

It was a narrative carefully formulated by the media for the intended target audience which was, you guessed it: Pākehā.

Misframing a story just one example
Weaponising activism through misframing a story is just one example. We were also sold a narrative that Māori are the criminals, the baby killers, the gang members, the underachievers, the prisoners, the drug and alcohol addicts.

What do you think this does to a person when you are constantly fed a false narrative of your identity? Your mana diminishes every time you switch on the news, open the newspaper, turn on the radio. Even worse, what happens when you are a child?

The media didn’t care how this narrative would impact me or the thousands of other Māori growing up in urban cities, unsure of who we were, no grandparents alive to teach us our identity, busy parents trying to push us into mainstream because that’s what they were told would be “best” for us and so we were forced to learn about who we are through the eyes of the media. And it wasn’t pretty.

Many years have passed since the foreshore and seabed hīkoi, yet in the year 2021 the same racism exists today, instigated by the same institutions that continue to push this same, tired narrative.

Joe Bloggs calls up a radio station well known to be racist to Māori and says “they’re (Māori) victims of their own genetic background. They are genetically predisposed to crime, alcohol, and underperformance educationally” – and the radio host who used to be the Mayor of Auckland doubles down and says something equally, if not more, racist.

This incident is not shocking to Māori, because we have heard this our whole lives. The question we should be asking ourselves is: How have we allowed the media to get away with this for so long? The continual, blatant attacks against Māori from this particular station have been among the biggest contributors to racism in this country.

There are many examples of racism from this network but I’m not about to dive into its racist history, because I’m tired. We. Are. Tired. Google the radio hosts, look at their Twitter feeds, turn on talkback at any time of the day and the same, racist rhetoric will be there.

Network needs to stop hiding
John Banks deserves criticism but the network needs to stop hiding behind the facade of this being an individual problem. There are many John Banks who come in different forms, some working in the media who get to say whatever they want under the guise of “free speech”. Even the Christchurch terrorist attacks, where a white supremacist murdered 51 people could only keep these people quiet for one week before the station went back to regular, racist programming.

So what happens now? I can predict what will happen because this is the same vicious, ugly cycle. The racist outburst goes viral, there is some outrage. Advertisers pull out, there’s a loss of revenue, the network apologises. The person is fired. Then it happens again the next day, the next week, the next month. It seems it is much more convenient to take out the individual rather than address the racist and colonial system that exists within our media and institutions.

It’s good to see the outpouring of support from Pākehā but we need more than empathy. We need action. You get to feel outraged for a day and then go home and forget about it and not think about it again. Māori can’t switch it off. We experience racism in our workplaces, in everyday life and we have to turn on the media and see it there too.

How many more racist outbursts do you need to hear before something is done? How many more articles do you need to read before there is change?

This isn’t a matter of opinion. This is about human rights.

Shilo Kino is a reporter and the author of her new book The Pōrangi Boy, released last month with Huia publishers. She writes about social issues, justice and identity. This article was first published by Newsroom and is republished on Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.
Twitter: @shilokino

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Three Citizenships

The concept of ‘citizenship’ has both general and specific meanings.

The most specific and familiar I call passport citizenship. A passport citizen of a country is a person holding a passport for that country, or with unambiguous entitlement to hold such a passport. More than anything a passport is a travel document, so passport citizenship largely defines a person’s travel rights.

A child can be a passport citizen. And it is possible for a person to hold multiple passport citizenships.

The second concept is political citizenship, which is essentially suffrage, the right to vote. Thus, political citizenship is a democratic concept. A ‘dependent child’ cannot be a political citizen, though the definition of ‘dependent child’ may differ in different countries. (For this discussion, a child is a non-adult; a person can only be an adult or a dependent child.) It is possible for a person to hold multiple political citizenship, even if a person holds just one passport citizenship. For example, an Australian-born adult resident in New Zealand – as a ‘permanent resident’ of New Zealand – is a political citizen of both Australia and New Zealand; many such people only carry Australian passports.

An ordinary adult resident of a non-democratic country is a passport citizen, but not a political citizen. In New Zealand, a person in prison for more than three years is not a current political citizen, but is a passport citizen (albeit with highly constrained travel rights!). Political citizenship confers political rights.

The third concept is economic citizenship. At present, while economic citizenship has no formal definition, it is a very important concept. In summary, economic citizenship confers economic rights; and an adult person without economic rights is either a slave or an Orwellian unperson. Economic citizenship is not a new phrase; the term was used, for example, during the later years (1933 to 1935) of the Great Depression in New Zealand. (Refer, Malcolm McKinnon, The Broken Decade, p.291.)

As with political rights, economic rights are held by adults. In New Zealand at present, different economic rights come at different ages: 16 the right to own property and to marry; 18 the right to a normal benefit and to drink alcoholic beverages; 20 the right to inherit property; 24 the right to a student allowance. 18 is probably the most important age determining adulthood, because that’s when a parent ceases to be able to claim Family Tax Credits, Child Support, or Sole Parent Support. While, for sometime in the future I am comfortable with 16 being the age that defines adulthood, overall 18 would appear to be the age that in New Zealand best defines adulthood at present. In particular, the age of adulthood represents the commencement of both political and economic rights, and personal responsibility.

The appropriate definition of economic citizenship is firstly that an economic citizen is an adult. Secondly, every adult in the world is by definition a current economic citizen of one and only one country.

Thus, once a person is determined to be an adult, the only matter of interest to a country’s bureaucracy is which country that person is an economic citizen of. Thus, an adult born in Paraguay but living in New Zealand would have either ‘Paraguay’ or ‘New Zealand’ listed in their economic citizenship box; not ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Economic Citizenship

The concept of economic citizenship works best when all countries are on the same page. Thus, all adults in the world would have defined economic rights associated with the country of their economic citizenship. Of course, in a transitional world where the concept is new, it is inevitable that some countries will develop their economic rights ahead of other countries, just as some countries lagged in granting political rights. For example, Switzerland only granted women political citizenship in the 1970s.

Any adult living and working in New Zealand and only paying taxes in New Zealand clearly qualifies as an economic citizen of New Zealand. And they can only cease to be an economic citizen of New Zealand when they become an economic citizen of another country; thus, they do not cease to be economic citizens if they become unemployed. Further, adults who come to reside in New Zealand because their partners or ‘adult children’ are New Zealand economic residents become economic residents of New Zealand when they relinquish economic rights in their country of origin.

This means that many people who are passport citizens or political citizens of other countries are nevertheless economic citizens of New Zealand. And these people continue to be economic citizens of New Zealand, even when they visit their country of origin or any other country. Further, all economic citizens of New Zealand should have an equal and unqualified right to enter New Zealand. Any denial of the right of an economic citizen to be in New Zealand is the equivalent of deportation. (And we note that nobody should ever be deported to a country which is experiencing war, pestilence, or famine.) Any adult who has an agreed time limit on their economic citizenship – eg a term or condition on their visa – reverts to being an economic citizen of their country of origin, but only so long as they are able to re-acquire economic rights in their country of origin. (Inability to transfer economic rights could be a lack of transportation to that country, or pestilence in that country.)

Where a working visa expires and there is disagreement – eg a New Zealand economic citizen is stranded overseas, or where economic citizens in New Zealand are unable to undertake economic citizenship elsewhere – then they continue to be New Zealand economic citizens.

Where a person runs a business in another country but has residential rights in New Zealand (indeed may have a family resident in New Zealand), that person would normally be an economic citizen of the other country. That person’s partner, however, may be an economic citizen of New Zealand. A person can only be an economic citizen of one country at a time. Further, all dependent children of New Zealand economic citizens have the same residential rights as their parent(s).

There is a special case of ‘swallows’, or seasonal workers who regularly work in one country for a part of each year, and live in another country for the other part. Such people – and there are many Pacific-born people in New Zealand who are swallows – should be able to arrange seasonal transfers of economic citizenship. Thus, Tongan-born seasonal workers stranded in New Zealand should be classed as New Zealand economic citizens until they are able to resume Tongan economic citizenship.

The key principle of economic citizenship is that a person can only cease to be an economic citizen of one country if they can practically become an economic citizen of another country.

Economic citizenship gives a person economic rights in one country. Thus, in a civilised world, no adult human being can have no economic rights. (The economic rights of dependent children are implicit, through their parents’ duty of care to their children.) Economic rights can be transferred, but not extinguished.

Denizens

We may note that any person who is an economic citizen of the country they live in, but is not a political citizen, is thus a denizen. For example, most New Zealand born economic residents of Australia are denizens of Australia, and political citizens of New Zealand. While they pay taxes in Australia, they vote for parliamentarians in New Zealand.

Economic Rights – Duty of Care

The essential economic right is ‘duty of care’, including the right to a return on shared equity. I will formalise the latter right as the conceptual right to an economic dividend as a public property right. Economic citizens hold collective ownership of a country’s collective economic resources, including a share of their country’s share of global collective resources.

Thus, the most important economic right is one that no country has yet granted in a formal sense, but most countries do in an informal sense. This is the right to an economic dividend.

The most practical way to think through this is to note that all countries currently pay their economic citizens a formal weekly dividend of $0.00. Thus, we create the concept of a formal dividend as a conceptual placeholder. Next, we can think about how different countries exercise their duty of care towards their citizens and denizens.

On this, I will note the concept of ‘social security’ as synonymous with ‘duty of care’. There is an accepted understanding that all people who belong in a community have a right to some share of that community’s benefits. We may extend the word ‘community’ to society, where ‘society’ can be understood as a national community. We expect that an unemployed person in Norway has a higher material standard of living than an unemployed person in Ukraine, even though neither has a job. And we expect that a minimum wage worker in Norway has a higher standard of living than a minimum wage worker in Ukraine, despite the fact that both may be doing much the same job. In both cases, the Norwegians are receiving higher social dividends than the Ukrainians; even if in neither case their dividends are called ‘dividends’.

What happens is that unemployed Norwegians receive bigger welfare ‘transfers’ than unemployed Ukrainians. And Norwegian Workers receive higher wages (and income tax concessions that come with their wages) than do Ukrainian workers. Part of each Norwegian’s wage is in reality a payment that reflects productivity rather than effort. The main source of higher productivity in Norway is more capital – public capital and private capital – per person resident in Norway. Part of the wage of the Norwegian worker and the benefit of the Norwegian beneficiary is in reality a ‘public equity dividend’, reflecting the public capital contribution to productivity. Likewise, the Ukrainian worker and the Ukrainian beneficiary; it’s just that the Ukrainian dividend is much less than the Norwegian dividend.

In each country there may be people who miss out on these implicit dividends, because they have ‘fallen through the cracks’. A formal non-zero public equity dividend means that no economic citizen falls through the cracks. It’s mainly an accounting matter to formalise the public equity dividend, noting that for most people they already receive it as a part of something else. The reform process may be called ‘account and fill’ – properly accounting for those who do get it, and filling in the cracks for those who don’t.

Presently – in New Zealand and elsewhere – the formal weekly dividend is $0.00. Following an ‘account and fill’ reform, the formal weekly dividend will rise above $0.00. Once that is done, the important discussion about how big or small the dividend should be can then take place. I have suggested elsewhere that the most practical starting level in New Zealand is $175 per week, payable as an economic right to all economic citizens of New Zealand. (Refer to my Universal Income Flat Tax: the Mechanism that Makes the Necessary Possible.)

Addendum: Foreign Lives Matter

In modern political discourse, the biggest taboo of all is to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, or any other identity attribute. That is, so long as the person is a political or passport citizen of a country.

But it is open season to discriminate against economic citizens based on their immigration status. Governing attitudes make it a requirement to think of people who are not political citizens as foreigners, and that foreign lives are inconsequential. There is an ugly new nationalism building around the world, and I sadly note that New Zealand’s political leadership is contributing to that new nationalism. The message going out to economic citizens of New Zealand who are political citizens of South American nations is that they should ‘go home’ to countries that are currently the continental epicentre of a hugely consequential pandemic. (It is no better than the President of a foreign country a few years ago telling political citizens of African descent that they could ‘go back to where they came from’.)

New Zealand – like any other country – has a duty towards its economic citizens. It is not appropriate to narrow the definition of those to whom New Zealand has a duty of care towards, cynically allowing people to fall through the cracks. The cost of abstaining from that duty is much greater than the cost of meeting it. The cost is not in money; after all, money is a social technology. The cost is in lost care, in lost employment opportunities, in lives adrift. So long as New Zealand has access to food and labour, New Zealanders do not give up anything of substance in order to provide for all of those economic citizens ‘who are us’.

Further, New Zealand can provide support to others that might not be us, but who are close to us. What are we doing for our Pacific neighbours? Samoan lives matter. Fijian Lives matter. Tongan lives matter.

While New Zealand has no special obligation towards other countries – other than neighbours such as these – New Zealanders should not be asked to not care about foreign lives.

Increasingly, political problems of housing, inequality, climate change and so forth, are viewed through a “generational lens”. This has some validity – there really are some major changes to New Zealand society that relate to demographics and generational changes.

But there’s a limit to the usefulness of an analysis that concentrates on problems being caused by one demographic, with the solution lying in a preference for different demographic. Society is much more complicated than this, and all demographic groups – especially age groups – are less socially and politically homogenous than many generational warriors would have us believe.

The strongest critiques of the “OK boomer” philosophy complain that generation-focused activists are jettisoning any sort of socio-economic analysis in favour of an identity politics approach. For example, writing in the Guardian, US socialist Bhaskar Sunkara argues that the popularity of the phrase used by Swarbrick “tells us something about the cultural dominance of upper-middle-class youth” who prefer to see their enemies, not as businesspeople, property developers, or politicians, but just as a particular age demographic – see: Why it’s time to ditch the ‘OK Boomer’ meme.

Sunkara points out that young generation-focused activists “haven’t had to witness – or deal with the ramifications of – old age and precarity for millions of working people in that generational cohort. Instead they get to revel without self-reflection in oedipal angst about their elders – many of whom were kind enough to pass them their ill-gotten privileges. Workers of all ages, after all, barely earn enough to survive, much less save for retirement.”

He concludes that the identity politics of age is a distraction from the economic realities in countries like ours: “If ‘we’ have to divide ourselves, it makes sense to look for these class divisions rather than inventing common cultural characteristics across generations… That means knowing who your friends are and who your enemies are. Here’s a hint: it’s not ‘boomers’ – it’s that investment banker you went to high school with.”

If there was any doubt that Swarbrick’s “OK boomer” approach was anything more than a throwaway remark, she penned a column for the Guardian doubling down on it, arguing her use of the phrase was in reaction to the fact that “our politics has been run by older dudes in suits” – see: My ‘OK boomer’ comment in parliament symbolised exhaustion of multiple generations.

This kind of identity politics is condemned by veteran leftwing commentator Chris Trotter in a column suggesting that such middle class distractions are perfect for those who really benefit from the status quo: the rich – see: Not so much ‘Ok Boomer’ as ‘Ok Ruling Class’.

Trotter argues that a generational especially suits those who have done so well since the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, because the discontented focus their rage on other sections of society: “whites, males, straights and, most recently and ridiculously, Baby Boomers.” He argues for a return to some good, old-fashioned class struggle – viewing the rich and powerful as the problem, regardless of their age demographic (or their ethnicity, gender, etc).

Similarly, see Steven Cowan’s Chloe Swarbrick: OK Boomer or OK Capitalist? He says Swarbrick’s “casual parliamentary insult not only reeks of smug, middle class conceit but stereotypes the older generation as greedy narcissists, sitting atop a big pile of assets and cash. But, like all stereotypes, it’s not true. In 2015 research by Colmar Brunton revealed that more than forty percent of 50- to 70- year-olds were found to have little or no retirement savings and almost half face spending cuts to make ends meet in their retirement.”

As if to reinforce this point, last week the Herald published Dara McNaught’s arguments about those in aged poverty, using the example of one case study: “With a 40-year work history and a lifetime being mindful about money, Remy didn’t expect to be nearing 70 and struggling to survive. Work hard, save hard, and you’ll be fine – isn’t that how it goes? And if you haven’t got enough by the time you retire, well you’ve obviously been irresponsible, careless, or improvident” – see: Superannuitants caught in the trap of poverty.

McNaught reports: “She can’t work now and is malnourished because she doesn’t have enough money for food. Five years ago, she could manage, just. But superannuation and WINZ supplements haven’t kept pace with steeply rising costs in rents, petrol, heating and especially food. No, budgeting doesn’t cut it.”

One superannuant writes with humour about blaming boomers for using too many resources. Rosemary McLeod explains: “we’re needing the costly, underfunded health system as we disintegrate. We’re a burden on the system we funded through taxes” – see: It’s the Boomers’ fault: we created these Millennial monsters.

Furthermore, “We paid mortgage rates in double digits to hang on to them while successive governments, in the grip of mad market theories of economics, stopped building homes for people in need. We shouldn’t have. Or something. Compulsory acquisition of our houses can’t be far off, to force us into the army camps for the aged springing up everywhere.”

And she points out that woke identitarians therefore have her demographic in their sights: “We’re the one group that woke people feel free to mock. They’re woke on gender issues, race issues, human rights, their own rights, cannabis use (which we made mainstream, by the way) and kindness every which way, except toward us.”

According to Massey University’s Steve Elers, the “OK boomer” approach is akin to pointing the finger at the “pale, male and stale” as if they are the homogenous problem – see: Punching up with ‘OK, Boomer’ and ‘pale, male, stale’ may get a laugh but they’re just air swings.

He argues, “classifying and ordering people into a single collective group based on race and ethnicity, gender, and age doesn’t actually do any good for advancing social causes or arguments”, but can actually “mean losing allies who were supportive of particular social causes and arguments.”

This week’s Listener editorial makes a similar case: “Intergenerational warfare is as old as civilisation itself, but it’s in danger of becoming downright uncivilised as we fall into the habit of blaming each other’s demographic tribes for environmental degradation, inequality and much else” – see: The OK, boomer uproar blotted out an important intergenerational moment.

The editorial points out that baby boomers have played a nation-building role in paying higher taxes, building the welfare state, and fostering progressive social change, before concluding: “Looking back in bitterness improves nothing and, worse, risks alienating people into nihilistic inaction. So, OK, boomers and hey, snowflakes: we’re all in this together.”

Similarly, business journalist Rob Stock argues that “the language of intergenerational fairness obscures just as much as it illuminates”, and “It tars a whole group with the same brush, and so doing unifies those using the language: Millennials are the lazy generation, greens are socialists in disguise, all beneficiaries are potential cheats, farmers are animal abusers, men are to women what bicycles are to fish, all baby boomers only care about keeping their tax rates low and the prices of their houses up” – see: Give Baby Boomers their dues.

Stock also suggests that it’s a mistake to talk “about Baby Boomers as if it is a homogenous generation, and the root of all social wrong today, and forgetting all its successes, and the fact that many Baby Boomers are actually poor as dirt”.

Some writers have identified the core economic issue at the heart of the growing generational discontent – housing unaffordability. In his evaluation of the generational war, millennial Richard Meadows says: “Time to address the trillion-dollar elephant in the room. Back in 1980, you could buy a decent house for $28,000. That was only two to three times the median income – a level of affordability which was normal for decades. Today, a median home costs six times the median income (and in Auckland, nine times). Houses are fully two to three times less affordable today than they were for the boomers” – see: The Boomers are OK.

So, are boomers to blame for the housing crisis? Peter Calder says this view would be a divisive mistake, distracting “us from the conversations we should be having”. He says the fault lies with former and contemporary politicians who have not only refused to deal with the problem, but continue to benefit from it – see: Baby Boomers weren’t sitting idly by, it was the politicians.

Here’s Calder’s main point: “The only Boomers who could have stopped the national average house price rising from $110,000 to $600,000 (and in Auckland from $130,000 to $800,000) in the past 25 years were the ones sitting in Parliament… The sitting-by took place, all right, but it was calculated, for electoral advantage, and not idle at all. To say that my generation ‘failed to see’ what was happening is insulting.”

Finally, although his analysis might also escalate the generational wars, Damien Grant’s latest column is worth checking out, simply because it ends with his own clever generational poem riffing on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” – see: Quit whinging Millennials, Boomers built your houses and endured actual nuclear war.

1960 was a big year for my adopting parents. First came the infertility diagnosis. Then a new baby arrived with little warning and no fanfare. Followed within days by a new refrigerator.

I was one of over 103,000 New Zealand babies forcibly removed from my single mother. Her dying mother sent her to the doctor’s house with a couple of months to spare. The generous Dr Gerald Gleeson put her to work cleaning and scrubbing. Weeks before I was born he promised me away to the “an attractive young couple who belong to the Church of England.”

It was a typical story. The same thing happened in Canada. They describe it as one of their “most agonising scandals and one which for decades was covered up – the forced adoption of hundreds of thousands of babies born to unmarried mothers.” A full-scale inquiry is ongoing.

In New Zealand, we pretend it never happened.

In the total absence of government action, apology or investigation, I’ve been unraveling New Zealand’s history of forced adoption.

We’ve wrapped adoption in secrecy, tied it up with clichés and obfuscated the truth at every turn. We’ve conflated orphans with the illegitimate. We’ve never once paused to inquire about outcomes.

With so much around adoption shrouded in legal black holes and social expectation, most adopted people struggle to talk about it. Not only their own but the practice itself.

If you experience a difficult time in your natural born family, people understand. A violent father? A cold mother? There’s plenty of support for that trauma. .

But if you’re adopted that toxic family story takes on another element. When you try to speak about it, someone will ask the ‘what-ifs’. What if you’d been aborted? What if your natural family were worse? You could have grown up in an orphanage? In care? On the streets?

This is often followed by the, “I know a happy adoptee,” narrative. As if that one person’s experience is more significant than everything you’ve lost. And all the wrongs of being taken from your mother and stripped of your identity are irrelevant.

But what if you do grow up in a loving adopted family? And you really are that ‘happy adopted person?’

In many ways, this makes it more difficult. If you feel even the slightest bit ‘not right’ in your happy family there’s nowhere to place those feelings. To express doubts, to acknowledge a yearning for blood in the face of good parenting is almost impossible. Even to yourself.

And so the fog descends. The disconnect between your inner life and external expectations is vast. Often the fog is preferable.

Whether you recognise it or not, adoption is trauma. In truth both the idyllic and the unfit family is invested in being better than the mother they took you from. The person you might have been, the life you would have lived, if not for them, is rarely acknowledged. But no matter the quality of your upbringing, we all live with a sense of a yearning for blood connections.

For me, as young teen all I wanted was someone who looked like me. I had to wait until I gave birth to my first daughter. She arrived with fine hair and delicate features. But then I realised there were no photos of me until I was three months old. I had no idea if I looked like her as a new baby. No reason, my adopting mother said, casually, when asked. “I was too busy to take photos.”

Except for that camera-worthy new refrigerator. It was either me or the fridge. It’s obvious who won. I have the photo to prove it.

– ref. The baby or the fridge – https://www.barbarasumner.nz/blog/2019/2/13/the-baby-or-the-fridge

By Dr Janet Tupou

Hand over heart, speaking life into your goals and dreams can see them come true.

After sitting in my first ever lecture at university, I knew that I wanted to be the one on the other side of the lectern. Week after week for three years in my undergraduate studies, I failed to see any Māori or Pasifika educators on the stage.

It was during those years that I set out the goal to be a university lecturer to inject some diversity into that space. Six years on, you can find me in front of the lecture stage and classroom, doing just that.

After completing a Bachelor of Communications Studies and honours degree, I began studying a Masters focusing on emotional labour. In other words, I call it ‘mastering the art of wearing different masks.’

As I was studying, I began teaching on undergraduate papers, the very same ones I had taken a few years back. It was such a surreal moment, to be lecturing alongside the same educators that once taught me. And it still is.

I then began studying a PhD called (De)constructing Tongan Creativity: A talanoa about walking in two worlds, which was recently awarded. The topic came to me after noticing a lack of scholarship around creativity in Tongan culture while I was teaching.

-Partners-

I wanted to show all sides of the story, particularly from a Tongan perspective. I therefore wanted to explore what creativity meant for Tongan people, specifically Tongan youth in New Zealand, and that’s exactly what I did.

Identity crisis
Creativity is seen as a concept that can be seen as a threat to the Tongan culture. For example, for Tongans who are born in New Zealand, there can be an identity crisis in how to express one’s Tonganness in a Western world.

I found there is a lack of awareness of how much creativity and studying creative subjects at a higher level can better Tongan people.

My passion of exploring the notion of creativity at a deeper level is also put into practice in my teaching approaches, by way of allowing students to share their creative outlooks, voices and perspectives on any given topic that is discussed in a safe space. At the same time, to back up my talk, I walked the walk by studying my Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Teaching.

As well as lecturing full time, I am also a part time real estate salesperson. I use my skills to help educate and shed light on the complicated terminology and processes in this industry that often exploits people. How did I get to where I am today?

As a Christian, my faith has helped me power through achieving goals. Supportive family and friends, commitment and taking up incredible opportunities at institutions such as AUT has also played a huge part in my journey.

My ultimate goal as a teacher is to nurture belief in students to dream big and to achieve big. The classroom is my space to encourage students to be the best versions of themselves, because “Hand over heart, speaking life into your goals and dreams can see them come true.”

Dr Janet Tupou is a lecturer in Communication Studies and chair of the AUT School of Communication Studies diversity committee. This article was first published by Spasifik magazine and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As a child, my family saw the musical Oliver. For days after, my adopting mother hummed and sang the theme tune:

Consider yourself one of us
Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family ….etc etc

The song is a bit of an earworm. I’d forgotten it and the memory until recently when I heard it on the radio.

If you’ve seen the film (or read Dickens), you’ll know that being ‘one of us in Oliver was conditional on acting the part. You had to abide by their code of thievery and obey Fagin, the orphan master.

It makes sense. Like Fagin’s gang, we humans are tribal.

We gather with those who share our values. We’re always on the lookout for casual signifiers of belonging.

When we have kids, family and friends scan the scrunched face of your newborn for resemblance. His father’s nose, her mother’s eyes. When we pull out baby photos of close family and compare them, we recognise the child as one of us.

But does it work the other way?

For a pre-verbal baby, it’s all about smell and sounds. Studies reveal that the basis of bonding is the mothers scent..

Familiar odours wired into a babies brain affect nerve pathways and brain development. One researcher found that in the first few hours after birth, a baby identifies her mother by her smell.

In another study, day-old babies recognised their mother’s voice. They connected pacifiers to tape recorders. One sucking pattern turned on their mother’s voice, while another activated a strangers voice. Guess which sucking pattern the babies used?

So how does this all work for a person removed from their mother for adoption?

In The Primal Wound, Nancy Verrier says there’s an assumption a baby knows nothing. Any deprivation can be overcome by the adoptive parents. But for the infant, absence of her mother is the same as death. She goes through a withdrawal process as her most basic need for connection goes unmet. The loss of the original mother becomes imprinted in the child’s psyche and cells.

Growing up adopted in a stranger family I’ve experienced first hand how deep that loss and grief runs. How everything from smell to sport was wrong. And how the things we ignored, such as lack of family resemblance were the unspoken arrows of daily life.

It’s not easy for the adopting mother either. They also are grieving the child they could not have. They lack hormone bonding. They miss out on that recognition and satisfaction a new mother feels, despite the trials and exhaustion of birth? No one comments on how her baby looks like her. No one expects her child to be like her in any natural way. Instead, she must work extra hard to imprint her culture on the little stranger. While convincing herself that her experience is no different than for a biological mother.

This is the dirty secret of stranger adoption. Adoption is rarely a first choice. It’s not the same as biological parenting. No matter your parenting skills or commitment, this is not the child you would have had if you could have your own.

You won’t read that in pro-adoption literature. You cannot expect the adopted person to become the child you could not have.

I believe it does something to the adopting mother, creating an atmosphere of rote caring. The mother working hard to be seen to love the child she has no connection to.

In “Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are,” Robert Plomin, concludes that babies are not balls of clay. Plomin is a behavioural geneticist. He says babies are not shaped by their parents after birth.  You arrive with imprinted traits from your biological parents.

His research proves that nurturing has little effect on the person you become. Children take after their first parents, not their adoptive parents. From cognitive skills and interests to personality traits. They even resemble their first parents in non-genetic traits. Television watching for instance and likelihood of getting divorced. “This comes as no surprise to first parents who meet their lost offspring. But it’s heartening and reassuring to have our impressions supported by scientific research.”  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nature-not-nurture-after-all-genetics-robert-plomin-polygenic-testing

So how does an adopted person cope with this? They fake it.

The fantasy of the happy adoptee is ingrained in our society. It becomes the job of the adopted person to prove this story true. To salve the wounds of the adopting parent’s infertility. To act as if they are the missing child, to bend and fold and adjust themselves to fit into the adoptor’s family. As if they have no other mother. As if they are indeed one of them.

Of course, someone will jump up and say “I had good adoption. That was not my experience.’

I’m happy they got lucky. But that’s the point. They were fortunate not to experience abuse in addition to what every adoptee already endures.

Because adoption itself is inherently abusive. To say I had a good adoption is like saying I had a good car accident or a good mugging. Of course, some are worse than others. But they’re all bad things. Every adopted person has experienced separation trauma and had their rights violated. Even if they are not ready to acknowledge it. Adoption itself is the trauma.”

I’d describe stranger adoption as a state of suspended animation. You learn early that your inner need for authenticity will never be met. So you split that part of yourself of. And go through the motions. In adoption circles, this is the ‘good adoptee syndrome’. Your real self packed down tight while you smile and wave at the world.

The idea of being a stranger within your family is not limited to children and parents. In my experience, the wider family feels it too. You are a cuckoo in their extended family nest, treated with suspicion, your provenance a mystery.

Throughout history, humans have distrusted outsiders. We’ve always had city walls and borders and the need to identify ourselves. We’ve always had this innate sense of the good us versus the untrustworthy them. Just as Charles Dickens characters understood.

In the absence of blood ties, the only signifier of being one of us is your behaviour. So be a good adoptee, play your part and all will be well with the world.

– ref. Consider youself one of us – https://www.barbarasumner.nz/blog/2019/1/15/consider-youself-one-of-us

By Bryce Edwards.

“All liberation movements fall apart and devolve into factionalism” suggested Kim Hill yesterday in her RNZ interview with Pride festival board chairperson Cissy Rock. Although expressed in rather a negative way, Hill’s statement is one of the clearest observations of the current meltdown in the LGBTQ+ community over whether uniformed police should be allowed to march in the annual Auckland Pride parade. 

You can listen to the fascinating 23-minute encounter here: Cissy Rock – Pride Parade wrangle. The interview, which is sometimes terse and difficult, is a useful discussion of the colourful contemporary politics of identity, gender and sexuality that is part of the culture war tearing the queer community apart.

Of course if this current schism in the LGBTQ+ community proves anything, it’s that there really is no “queer community”. Instead there are broadly (at least) two different queer communities: a radical one and a mainstream one. And increasingly, it seems, the two sides can no longer be contained in one movement, let alone one Pride event.

The anti-police faction is championing a more anti-Establishment movement of protest, activism and an anti-authority ethos. This approach has a strong history in a movement that has had to fight in countries like New Zealand against a status quo that was opposed to their very existence.

The pro-police faction of the queer community now generally works alongside, as well as within, Establishment institutions such as the police, the armed forces, and corporations. After many important victories and a profound shift in public opinion, this element of the struggle has taken on a more politically mainstream character. This has meant that gay pride events have also gradually become less overtly political, and more mainstream.

These two radical and mainstream “factions” have always been there, but what’s changed is that it’s now simply proving too difficult to bridge these two sides together anymore. This has best been acknowledged by Green MP Jan Logie who says that the Pride board that organises the parade is making huge efforts to “hold together our communities, which have very different histories and realities” – see Jason Walls’ PM Jacinda Ardern says the Pride Parade is ‘at its best when it’s an inclusive event’.

The same article quotes other politicians expressing their disappointment and dismay about the Police and other institutions no longer participating in Auckland Pride. But should we be surprised about this major division in the queer community? Arguably, not.

A couple of weeks ago, when the issue first became public, I argued that the notion of a unified queer movement is akin to the idea that Māori form an homogenous group. As the Māori Party discovered, Māori as a putative political force actually can’t be easily contained in one political party: “The Māori Party was a lesson in this – it sought to represent Māori as some sort of homogenous voting group, but the contradictions of its support base meant that it broke apart (most notably with the more radical Hone Harawira departing)”

Likewise, there are very different political views and realities in the queer community, and these reflect the different demographics involved – see: The Schism in the LGBTQ+ movement over police (paywalled).

The evolution of sexual and gender progress in terms of civil rights and societal acceptance means that the whole basis of the “queer community” has changed. With important victories being achieved, the Pride march, for example, has come to reflect the mainstream majority of queers. It’s become a celebration rather than an activist event.

Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum now participate in Pride events, and large companies have become sponsors. The military, police, and prison officers have attended – increasingly in their uniforms. As part of the pride scene, now, there are rainbow coloured police cars and ANZ’s “GAYTMs” for withdrawing cash.

Not everyone in the queer community has welcomed this evolution. The more radical activists have been uncomfortable with the idea that “diversity” means banks, police, and other authority figures getting a place in their parade. For such radicals, these “oppressive” institutions are engaging in “pinkwashing” – in which institutions or corporations are seen as attempting to win over citizens and customers with superficial marketing.

There are other ways of thinking about the dispute. The Southland Times sees it as less about ingrained ideological differences in the movement, and more about the occasional problems of bureaucracy and democracy in all institutions – see: A momentarily pallid rainbow.

Here’s the editorial’s main point about the “whole shemozzle”: “Perhaps the Pride community is no more immune to eddies of disagreement, personality clashes, mishandled meetings, oldsters and youngsters exasperating each other, than the rest of us. In which case we’re seeing nothing much more than it being their turn to screw up, as malfunctioning committees are prone to do. Maybe, as one wag has noted, it’s just the case that the committee needs diversity training.”

The mainstream voices

To get a perspective on why many in the LGBTQ+ community are frustrated by the exclusion of the police from Pride, see Aziz Al-Sa’afin’s opinion piece: The not-so-inclusive Pride Parade. In this, Al-Sa’afin explains why he’s boycotting the parade. He complains about the radicals that are now organising the event: “They do not speak for me. They do not speak for my friends. And, quite frankly, they do not speak for the entire LGBTQI community.”

Also strongly opposed to the ban on the police, Levi Joule, a former editor of New Zealand LGBT publication Express, has hit out at the radicals: “Those views are outdated and out of touch with the vast majority of our community who pay taxes, raise children and have careers. The LGBT community is colourful and includes people from a range of political perspectives, religions and ethnicities” – see: Let uniformed LGBT police parade their Pride.

Joule makes it clear that the positions of the two sides are rather intractable: “it appears a small group with extremist agendas are once again dictating to the rest of the community who can and cannot participate in our parade and festival, regardless of what the overwhelming majority of LGBT people want. Similarly, a small group had prison officers banned from the 2017 parade, attempted to forcibly disrupt the Israeli embassy from marching in the 2014 parade and have asked for a number of corporations they don’t like to also be excluded.”

Mainstream allies are also putting the spotlight on the radicals in the movement, arguing that they are extremists – see, for example, David Farrar’s blogpost, So how extreme are PAPA? He argues, “The banning of the Police wearing uniforms at the Auckland Pride Parade has come about due to capture by an activist group called People Against Prisons Aotearoa. Now their agenda is not just banning of Police uniforms at the Pride Parade. They are at what is basically the lunatic end of the political spectrum. Don’t take my word for it. Read their manifesto.”

A number of international mainstream figures are being asked to comment on the dispute – see Aroha Awarau’s Rupert Everett on Auckland Pride Board’s police uniform ban: ‘We can’t pretend they don’t exist’.

It’s possible that although police might not march in the Pride parade, there may be a protest fancy-dress “police” force participating in February – see: Facebook group set up to ‘Attend Pride Parade dressed as a policeman!’ in wake of ban.

The radical voices

With a large number of the corporate sponsors pulling out of the Pride parade, ActionStation organiser Laura O’Connell Rapira has launched a crowdfunding campaign to replace lost business sponsorship – see Amy Williams’ Crowdfunding for Auckland Pride parade raises $3000 overnight. The money raised now totals about $16,000.

And along with Kassie Hartendorp, O’Connell Rapira has explained the opposition to Police marching in uniform: “Police uniforms represent oppression and violence to many rainbow folk and people of colour. Because the history of police toward rainbow folk and people of colour is violent. In the 1940s and 50s, it was still legal for gay men to be sentenced to whipping, flogging and hard labour” – see: Police and Pride: We need to heal our relationships first.

There are a number of leftwing activists in the radical camp, and activist Eva Allan has explained their strong differences with the more mainstream faction: “At the core of the current dispute is a failure of the privileged within the LGBT community to compromise in order to allow wider participation in what should be a more open, less pinkwashed Pride Parade. This is a continuation of the old politics of respectability, where wealthy LGBT people largely ignored the plight of the less well off in the community” – see: No Pride In the Police.

Laura O’Connell Rapira has also penned a political poem that nicely encapsulates the radical view – see: Brown bodies and blue uniforms.

Overseas allies are also being pulled in to give support for the radical position – see Mandy Te’s RuPaul’s Drag Race star films video in support of Auckland Pride Parade’s uniform ban.

There’s a serious ethnicity component to opposition to police involvement in Pride. Waikato University’s Leonie Pihama has outlined her problems with the police and justice system that are relevant to the decision to exclude the police – see her blogpost, A day in Twitter-Verse.

Pihama argues that many police efforts to be more sensitive to her community are just superficial: “Painting a rainbow on a car does not make that a different kind of Police diversity car, it is still a car that Takatāpui and LGBTIQ are placed into for arrest. Just like painting koru and the word “Pirihimana” on a Police car does not make it a ‘Māori-friendly’ car, it remains a Police Car.”

Finally, veteran leftwing commentator Chris Trotter has come out in support of the radicals, and he explains how “the rainbow community turned out to be so conservative” and says there’s a need to make more progress on the civil rights of those at the sharper end of current discrimination – the “trans community” – see: The Perils of inclusion.

There have always been inconsistencies in my birth story. The dates, the people involved, the actual circumstances. All missing, suspect or manufactured.

As an adopted person I have no legal right to know anything other than the story my adopting parents chose to tell. So I decided to challenge that.

I started with govt.nz, the guide to finding and using government services. Could it really be as simple as requesting a copy of my ‘pre-adoption birth certificate?’

A pre-adoption birth certificate? As if the adoption itself is my starting point. Anything else must fit into the nebulous ‘pre’ where anything before is a priori – based on a theory.

After all, I already have a birth certificate. It records my adopting parents as my natural parents. As if I am the natural child of my adopters. As if I am no different than anyone else.

Except, I came into this world with a background as dark as deep space. My adopting father’s workmate nailed it. “Why would you (adopt), you don’t know what you’ll get?” This story was told as a way to explain what a generous thing my adopting father had done.

His workmate was right. I was an unknown quantity. Not quite natural, not entirely trusted in the way we trust blood. You are, as a relative of my adopting family once described me – strange fruit.

So I requested my pre-adoption birth certificate. That “may contain details of your birth mother and birth father.”

Except mine had my mother only, even though I now know my father’s name is in my file. I’ve yet to meet an adopted person with their father’s name on the original birth certificate. Which makes you wonder if pre-adoption certificates are not designed to document birth. But rather, to further social agendas. Like protecting men from the consequences of their sexual activity.

Next, there’s an age limit. You have to be 20 or older to apply for your pre-adoption birth certificate.

Why 20, you ask. You can have sex at 16, enlist in the defence force at 17, drink, vote and get married at 18.

The New Zealand Law Commission says it was to assuage the fears of adoptive parents. Natural mothers might try to intervene.

Crazy mothers showing up to claim back their babies! That would never do. But hidden beneath that reasoning is the notion of lifetime infantilising.

Because, you will always be an adopted child. Never an adopted adult. A judge nailed it when he described us as “adopted children of any age.”

Luckily I met the over 20 criteria. But instead of receiving my birth certificate in the mail like any other citizen I must see a counsellor. At 58. The counsellor gets to decide if I am balanced enough to receive this information. (I passed the test)

Next step. Govt.nz tells me to contact Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children. “An adoption social worker will find your adoption records and give you details recorded at the time of your placement.”

I’m not sure what an adoption social worker actually does. But Oranga Tamariki’s website says, “It may be possible to find information about your birth parent. We can help you with this process.”

And right there we jump from infantilising to farce.

My adoption social worker found my records. With the file sitting on her desk she informed me there was a problem. The law did not allow her to reveal the contents to me.

So she passed me over to a new recruit. A young man, fresh out of social worker school, with no understanding of adoption issues.

I complained. My adoption social worker promised to provide a file number (not the file itself) by the next day. That was months ago.

I complained. She passed me onto the Supervisor at the Caregiver Contact Team. This person sighed and directed me back to my adoption social worker.

I complained. My adoption social worker said she would seek advice from her Regional Advisor.

I followed up. She was now seeking advice from her Supervisor. I let the usual ten working days elapse and followed up. “I need to seek advice from my Regional Executive Manager,” she said.

That person referred me back to the Adoptions Services team. And you guessed it, they referred me back to the social worker.

Weeks turned into months. Then my adoption social worker came up with the answer. I needed to make a request for my file through the Privacy and Official Information Services.

I filled out the paperwork. They missed the statutory deadline to answer my query. I followed up. They’d forgotten to send my request to the correct person. I waited. 20 days later they directed me back to my adoption social worker. Who missed her deadline to reply. I followed up. And she referred me to her advisor at the National Office.

And that’s where we’ve left it, with my file on any number of anonymous desks. My information denied to me.

Such paternalism and control litter the history of adoption in New Zealand. Single mothers suffered unconscionable cruelty. Child trafficking and medical and social experiments were par for the course. Today, in service to those ideologies government departments peddle disinformation. While the staff delay, deny and deflect anyone who questions the official story.

I’m told the reasons revolve around privacy. Given anyone who might be affected is dead, I suspect the real goal is to preserve secrecy. To continue to hide our recent and most shameful past.

As a baby, I was the object of a transaction, a contract I was not a party to. I’d like to know when will my rights as an adult transcend the rights of people involved in that contract? And what will it take for the government to give up those secrets, apologise and make amends?

– ref. Strange fruit – https://www.sadiesumnerbooks.com/blog/2018/11/22/strange-fruit

The Gallows Bird is a historical trilogy I have coming out next year. There, we meet Mr Fingleston, a silk merchant and tailor.

The character of Mr Fingleston visited me in the early hours, over 20 years ago. I described him as an ivy bush of a man, small and messy with a moustache drooping below his chin.

The timing is important.

For most of my adult life I’ve been on a shadow journey to find my biological family. In 1983 after an overheard comment and some pre-internet sleuthing I found my mother. Shortly after she died in a fiery plane crash on her way to meet me.

From that point on I searched for my father. There were many wrong turns, false information, raised hopes and deep disappointments.

I found him, finally in 2017. Five years too late.

In finding my father, I discovered a new sister, a genealogist cousin and a very detailed family tree.

Including my great-grandfather, Alfred Fingleston.

And yes, he has the same name as my invented character. Yes, he was a master tailor. And yes, he lived where my novel is set. Then I find I look just like my father. I share a skill set with one of my sisters and have the same passions as another. Our children echo one another.

It makes you wonder to what extent our behaviour is predicated on the long-ago past? On DNA and genetic determinism.

25 years ago, proponents of the Human Genome Project said DNA would change everything. It would lead to ‘a new understanding of what it means to be a human being.‘

“Genetics and the Sociology of Identity”, a social sciences publication, studies genetics’ penetration into social life. How we negotiate the space between self, others and institutions in light of DNA. They worry about genetic determinism. The idea that genes control your behaviour.

Reading the science (as a non-scientist) I am struck by how nervous the writers seem.

And so they should.

Because it’s stepping back in history. Way back. To Plato and Aristotle. To Essentialism and Determinism. To the idea that every entity has a predetermined, genetic set of essential attributes necessary to its identity.

That belief held sway through history all the way until  Charles Darwin and Karl Marx changed the world by theorizing that external material conditions create identity.

This philosophy had to be if they were to end the inequities created by birth. (For men anyway. Women were still expected to behave in a gender deterministic way)

Nurture over nature.

Except DNA came along. Is DNA the elephant in the room of social sciences and social determinism?

Because DNA delivers a high degree of certainty about who we are. Race, ethnic origin, kinship, propensity to hereditary diseases and other traits.

But NZ law says otherwise. Under the Adoption Act 1955, I have no heredity rights. The act says I am ‘as if’ born to the people who adopted me.

I am a social experiment. My whole life It has been concomitant on me to play the part of the happy(ish) adoptee. To prove that social determinism is indeed a valid way to run society. While behind closed doors my behaviours and actions are still discussed as aberrations. A flaw in my genes.

It was not Karl Marx’s fault. It was my fault I did not fit the family deemed more socially acceptable than my unmarried birth mother.

Meanwhile, the Adoption Act 1955 remains firmly in place. Propped up by unthinking judges and social workers. And by successive governments.

Between 1955 and 1990 the government took over 103,000 children from their mothers. They did it in the name of social engineering. Not one of us has ever had our rights restored.

Yes, DNA has given me some freedom. But my files remain locked away, my legal right to my history is still denied.

The Adoption Act 1955 remains able to separate children from their parents.

Thanks to DNA, Plato’s idea of essential nature is again a determinant of identity. Science, medicine, insurance companies, employers, government departments, policing and childcare services all seek to ascribe status and identity using DNA.

Except in New Zealand legislation. which still believes nurture can cure nature.

And The Gallows Bird? Thank you for asking. It should be available in about six months. Send me an email if you’d like to join either my author newsletter or the Like a Stranger newsletter. hello@sadiesumnerbooks.comT

There’s a cartoon doing the Internet rounds. A mum and a dad look down at their little girl: “Sarah, I’m afraid we’re not your real parents. You were made with sperm from Germany and an egg from Denmark from an Italian man and a Swedish woman, born to an English surrogate, rejected because you were a girl, adopted by Californian lesbians, looked after by a Cuban nanny and found by Derek here in a skip when you were three”.

Little Sarah looks bewildered. She’s in good company. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have created thousands of people.

It’s a genomic revolution.

But like stranger adoption, there has been next to no public conversation on the outcomes.

Back then they framed stranger adoption within the historical shame of illegitimacy. This was a failed experiment in social engineering. But our collective amnesia ensures we never talk about it.

Now, within that silence, a new generation of disinherited people is being born.

The genomic revolution is replete with social, scientific and human complexity. But the ramifications are hardly touched on.

Instead of engaging with this we stick to the idea of a couple struggling with infertility. Our couple visits a specialist to have their gametes extracted. They create an embryo that is then implanted in the intending mother. It’s a private medical issue, only a few steps removed from natural conception.

There’s nothing wrong with this picture. Except, like the myth of successful stranger adoption it doesn’t match reality.

Inside the ART industry, there’s little distinction between the two types of children. One, conceived with medical help from its parent’s gametes is born to its natural mother. The other curated, from an anonymous gamete lookbook, a surrogate and its parent’s bank account.

Rather than make those distinctions we look to Hollywood to define the issues for us. In the movie, The Switch Jennifer Aniston’s character is looking for a sperm donor. Her friend played by Jason Bateman’s asks: “What sort of qualities would you be shopping for? It’s a throwaway line in a rom-com with a twist. In The Kids are Alright the sperm daddy enters the lives of a lesbian couple and their twins. They make a mess of the consequences, tune it for bittersweet comedy, and ignore the real issues.

Films like these reveal how normal it has become to acquire a family in these ways.

In Los Angeles, so many are ART conceived. There, teenage cryokids check their donor numbers to make sure they’re not ‘hooking up with a syb.’

Many of us are unaware of how far science has advanced and how unprepared New Zealand is.

Currently, in New Zealand, we are looking to loosen regulation to allow the creation of a market to import and export gametes and embryos. England is assessing bio-prospecting and has allowed three-biological-parent IVF. Germany has debated pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and the spectre of eugenics. In India, they colonise the wombs of the poor and reproductive tourism is a hot-button issue. In Spain, a shortage of donor eggs has given rise to research into the creation of children from eggs gathered from aborted fetuses. In the US where anything goes if you can afford it, the production of twiblings is on the rise. While saviour siblings are no longer rare. Clinics author traits such as hair, eye colour, height, muscle strength and skin colour. In Australia, a leading fertility clinic is listed on the stock exchange. They run a chain of cut-price clinics. Another Australian clinic sidesteps local laws on PGD by owning a clinic in Thailand. While also in Thailand an illegal surrogacy slave ring was recently uncovered.

In New Zealand, the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ACART) assesses these technologies. It was set up to plan policy and advice specific to New Zealand and is open to public submissions.

But in reality, since the disbanding of The Bioethics Council in 2008, we do not have a public forum. (one of the National Party’s first actions on coming into power.) So very little public discourse takes place on any of these issues.

Instead, we have the fertility industry working as an active advisor to the ministry. They insist they are trust-worthy to lead all fertility regulation and decision-making.

Just as the church did back in the 50’s as they helped frame up adoption legislation.

Then it was the Anglican and Catholic churches and the Salvation Army. They played up the sin of illegitimacy and the sanctity of marriage. They created the fantasy of mothers happily giving up their babies to save them from shame.

In the end, it does not matter if you use science or morality to seperate people from their heritage. The result will always be the same – disenfranchised people, turned into commodities to satisfy a religious, social or financial agenda. Try being fully human when that is your legacy.

– ref. We’re not your real parents – https://www.sadiesumnerbooks.com/blog/2018/10/30/were-not-your-real-parents