The Paradoxes of Closed Stranger Adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Transracial adoptees continually navigate the paradoxes of adoption, which arise in bio-normative and racialized contexts. “Being-adopted-and-Māori” was explored with 15 Māori adult adoptees. Hermeneutic phenomenological analysis revealed experiences of adoptive and racial “differentness,” centered around four key paradoxes: “as if born to”; the lived experience of transracial adoption; post-reunion biological kinship; and whaka-papa. Examining these paradoxes elucidated the discursive basis of lived and felt contradictions and ambivalence, as well as otherness and exclusion. Māori adoptee identities are considered paradoxical precisely because they disobey hegemonic discourses. Their experiences tell us how dominant discourses of adoption and identity need to change.

Keywords:

• Transracial adoption
• discursive paradox
• identity

Acknowledgements

No funding was received for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Pākehā is a Māori language term for a person of primarily European descent. The term New Zealand European is used in official statistics, and is preferred over the term ‘White’ among the lay public.

2 There is a subtle but important distinction between difference and differentness. Where difference refers to points or ways in which people are dissimilar, differentness refers to the state or quality of being different.

3 The ideology of color-blindness is an apparently “benevolent repositioning of race as a social rather than biological construct” (Park Nelson, 2007, p. 196), which holds that the very act of recognising race perpetuates racism. According to this line of reasoning, if race is not recognised, there will be no racism (Quiroz, 2007).

4 Strategic essentialism refers to the promotion of ethnic/cultural identity as authentic, homogeneous and stable in order to realise certain political and social ends (Hoskins, 2012, pp. 85–6).

5 Kaupapa Māori refers literally to a Māori agenda or principles, and is the term used for practice ‘for, by, and with Māori’.

6 There is anecdotal evidence that a larger number of Māori children adopted out were the products of unions between Māori fathers and Pākehā mothers. This meant that the decisions about adoption were more likely to be made by Pākehā whānau, and there were some cases where children were adopted without the Māori birth father’s knowledge (Mikaere, 1994). This also meant that for this sample, birth fathers were the primary means by which to access information about Māori ancestry. This gave birth fathers an additional and special significance in contact/reunion.

7 Whakamā literally means to become pale or white, the external physical change resulting from emotions of shame and embarrassment due to sense of powerlessness and diminished status. From a Māori perspective, this affects the mauri (life force/essence) of a person (Smith, Tinirau & Smith, 2019, 27–8)

8 Ngāi Tahu – the tribal grouping of the lower South Island.

9 Ngāti Porou – the tribal grouping of the upper East Coast/East Cape of the North Island.

10 A colloquial word referring to the world or sphere of the Māori people.

Additional information

Funding

This research was approved by the University of Canterbury Human Ethics Committee (HEC2012/70).