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25 In New Zealand, as in many other nations, the notion of a collective experience of trauma has allowed different understandings of history, identity, and social policy to be articulated and contested.When the then Labour Party member of Parliament (MP) and associate minister of health (now coleader of the Maori Party) Tariana Turia proposed in August 2000 that Maori suffered from “Post Colonial Traumatic Stress Disorder ”1 she intervened in a complex set of discourses surrounding the Treaty of Waitangi (see Introduction), child abuse, and the ongoing legacies of colonial violence.The use of the word “holocaust” in Turia’s comments, and in documents produced by the Waitangi Tribunal, briefly (and belatedly) introduced international debates about genocide into this local context. Yet, Turia’s propositions about trauma and history in New Zealand, which invited initial hostility, appear to have since been absorbed into a general silence. Turia’s comments need to be seen in the context of events that led to her departure from the Labour-led coalition government, particularly the foreshore and seabed controversy .2 Turia’s opposition to Helen Clark (then prime minister and leader of the Labour Party) over this issue resulted in her dismissal from cabinet, her resignation from the Labour Party, and the formation in 2008 of the Maori Party.The specific association of Maori with high levels of child abuse in New Zealand forms part of a more general backlash by the dominant culture against Maori struggles for sovereignty. The horrific details of such abuse, when amplified by color photography and lurid journalistic description, became occasions for postsettler society to dramatize its guilt and anxiety about poverty and violence among Maori.3 Urban family dysfunction was made a symptom of the failure of Maori to conform to moral standards and the rule of law. Mainstream media constructed child abuse as a cultural trauma that Turia then resituated as part of a larger colonial history. The following discussion will consider some of the events that led to the brief controversy surroundingTuria’s proposal. In particular, I discuss a series of cover stories in the prestigious New Zealand magazines Metro and North and South concerning the deaths of young children in Maori families. Such stories have been prominent in New 2. Postcolonial Trauma Child Abuse, Genocide, and Journalism in New Zealand A L L E N M E E K 26 A L L E N M E E K Zealand media over the past fifteen years. One high-profile case attracting intense media coverage was the deaths of the three-month-old twins Chris and Cru Kahui in June 2006.The trial and acquittal of the twins’ father, Chris Kahui, in 2008 led to public outcries concerning the failure of the justice system and a “conspiracy of silence” on the part of the dead children’s whanau (extended family).4 Media commentary on such cases has tended to reproduce two major ideological, or discursive, positions: a neoliberal emphasis on individual responsibility and a state welfarist demand for greater intervention in the physical abuse of children. Both positions potentially con- flict with government policies of biculturalism, which recognize the important role of Maori social structures and cultural values in the provision of social welfare. But when Turia gave a speech to the New Zealand Psychological Society proposing that domestic violence among Maori needed to be understood with respect to the long-term impact of colonization, the child abuse debate escalated briefly into a broader argument regarding the nation’s history. The traumatic experience of a child, including horrific physical abuse by its adult caregivers leading to death, can become understood as a trauma in a cultural or historical sense through its representation in news media and public debate.The specific media coverage of domestic violence that I will discuss in this chapter included explicit photographs of the victims’ bodies and graphic descriptions of the abuse that they suffered leading to their deaths.What was at stake in this potent mix of image and narrative ?Why was media coverage focused so exclusively on Maori?5 Who did these bodies properly belong to and who should mourn their deaths, the citizens of New Zealand or Maori as a sovereign people? Journalists David McLoughlin, Deborah Coddington, Bill Ralston, and Geraldine Johns argued vigorously and evoked emotionally charged scenarios in order to claim victims, such as Jordan Ashby, Delcelia Witika, James Whakaruru , andTangaroa Matiu as members of the national family, all...

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