Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on RSNZ-funded research, uncovering why today’s urban-raised, Indigenous Māori school children (14-18 years old) still yearn to maintain their kin-connections to distant ancestral communities of origin (marae) and what this might mean for educators of Indigenous children worldwide.

Paper long abstract:

Since WWII over 80% of the Māori population, covering three successive generations, has re-centered itself far away from their ancestral kin-communities (marae), living an urban lifestyle in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). This migration was widespread, youth targeted and driven by two key factors, motivating Māori youth to leave their marae in search of a new life beyond their kin horizon. One motivator was the opportunity to escape the relative economic impoverishment and rural isolation; the other was Crown-inducements to attract labour into urban areas to build a post war economy. Young Māori were provided direct access to never-before experienced opportunities: relatively high wages for labour intensive jobs and access to state-sponsored benefits like housing, education and health. Within a generation these original migrants had reorganised themselves along ethnic pan-tribal lines, aligning with key industries and living in general proximity to one another. In the 1970s the golden year of plentiful jobs came to a grinding halt. NZ experienced a decade long deep recession, which hit Māori the hardest and retreating to their already impoverished marae was not an option. Three generations later (2020s) the vast majority of all Māori are urban-raised, struggling and seldom return to marae. From an anthropological perspective the intersection between ethnic identity maintenance in a colonised urban milieu and the desire to seek connection to distant marae at which the descendant is no longer known, raises a number of critical questions, not least, what does this mean for Indigenous children participating in today's colonial-prescribed education system?