Potonga Neilson: Birth not beginning for all of us

Potonga Neilson

TWO years working for the Department of Social Welfare convinced me that the establishment has no real answers to our social problems.

As a Maatua Whangai community worker, the emphasis was on Maori youth. It was my job to attend Youth Court once a week and try to help our rangatahi to straighten out their lives.

With the majority of the so-called offenders being Maori, this was a big task - there could be about 10 children or youths per week needing counselling or guidance.

After a year of frustration, I went to my supervisor and suggested that we should be looking for the causes and treating them instead of just treating the symptoms. His response was that if I had my way we would all be unemployed.

It was around that time that the Child Youth and Family policy was introduced. I could see no real progress in that policy either and, a year later, I resigned - but during that last year I would sneak off to the library to research social problems.

I pondered these problems and concluded that my life experience might provide some answers.

I have never suffered from depression. Or inflicted violence on any other person except for a few scraps with other young men who wanted to exercise their masculinity on myself.

So what's so different about me? Well, I was born into the Maori world before the urban migration. I and my parents lived with Kui Pani, who was born around 1840.

I was given certain rites and named by her while still in the womb. And other rites at birth. This continued till I was 4 years old and we moved to town.

As the family grew to six children, we would go back to Pakaraka to visit Kui Pani. We all had to line up and hongi our kuia and she would shed copious tears on seeing us.

We also had many family gatherings with mum's Pakeha whanau. Much love and affection was experienced there as well.

But for years after leaving Pakaraka, I dreamed of the home I had there. And, on returning in later life, I was shocked to find it deserted.

My present obsession is to work to rebuild our Maori culture so that our children may have the same beginnings that I had. Ko te mea nui ko te aroha (the greatest thing is love).

So it is my conviction that suicide prevention must begin with conception. And, indeed, any other prevention of violent or criminal behaviour.

I am also convinced that the establishment has no real answers to our social problems. Hell, they don't even know the questions.

Modern Western society actually creates criminals with all of its inequities. The whole emphasis is on the pursuit of wealth and possessions, but still younger generations of Maori insist on casting our Maori heritage aside and trying to find answers in what is still the colonial way.

This has been going on for many years and they have not realised that the Maori language will not survive in isolation from the papakainga and the ahikaaroa (the village and the home fires).

What we can gain from our Maori culture is a strong feeling of belonging. Not only to whanau but also to the natural world. Neither inferior nor superior, but an integral part of Ranginui and Papatuanuku.

One can never be lonely with knowledge and conviction of the comfort this can bring. And without our Maori culture in its true form we will be just another ethnic minority - and that is the real agenda of the Treaty settlements that we are all pursuing.

And that is the real issue today. A fair settlement so that we who wish to may return and re-establish our kainga and culture. All else is an exercise in futility. My time with Social Welfare was 30 years ago and nothing has changed.

Most of us have a reasonably good gestation within the womb. And birth is not the beginning - a baby can become an alcoholic or a drug addict in the womb, and it can also experience fear in a violent relationship.

No, birth is not the beginning.

-Potonga Neilson is a regular contributor to the Chronicle