VIOLENCE TOWARDS CHILDREN A COLONIAL PROCESS in Waatea news 7 September 2009
The head of Canterbury University's school of Maori and indigenous studies is off to Europe to present his research that child abuse among Maori was uncommon in pre-European times.
Rawiri Taonui will deliver papers to a conference in Italy this week hosted by Australia's Macquarie University and one in Wales for social workers specialising in indigenous child abuse.
He says material he's been collecting over the past decade indicates Maori child rearing practices at the time the first European settlers arrived in New Zealand were significantly different to today.
“Slapping, smacking or whatever you want to call it was really a kind of last option and was the exception rather than the rule. Through colonisation and corporal punishment at schools we have sort of inculcated a whole different regime over time which mixed in with poverty and marginalisation became distorted in our communities and we’ve ended up in the situation we're in,” Mr Taonui says.
OECD figures show violence towards Maori children is trending down as the Maori renaissance continues, but abuse rates of Pakeha children have increased sharply.
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