Kua takoto te mānuka Cultural identity as a resilience factor to reduce Māori youth offending

Abstract

This thesis examines, ‘How can cultural identity act as a resilience factor to reduce Māori youth offending?’. Developing a new line of inquiry into Māori youth offending, te matataki (the Māori ritual of encounter), the notion of liminality, and the theory of survivance (Vizenor, 1999) inform this multiple methods study where three main threads are addressed. First a review of governmental responsiveness to the disparate Māori youth offending statistics. Second an exploration of cultural identity trajectories, educational experiences, and cultural resilience factors for Māori youth who offend. Third an inquiry into an iwi (tribal) led remand service which seeks to enhance iwi identities of taitamariki (youths) who are remanded into the custody of the state. This research is timely as Māori youth are grossly overrepresented in youth justice. Māori youth account for 57% of all charges in the Youth Court for a serious criminal offence and 70% of all admissions to a youth justice residence in New Zealand. Foregrounding Te Matataki methodology and using thematic analysis, the overall findings with 29 participants (Key Informants, Māori youth, Whānau (family), and Iwi Practitioners) conclude that colonisation and state intervention impact on the transmission of cultural identities. Despite this, ahikā (family occupying tribal land), whakapapa (kin) and kaupapa whānau (non kin relations) resilience remain core to developing positive Māori identities and cultural connectedness for Māori youth who offend. Drawing on whakapapa pride and boldness, Māori youth who offend are afforded a strengths-based mechanism to resist racism, racial profiling, bias, and negative schooling experiences. Liminality in this study provides a space where Māori youth who offend can reclaim their tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty), adopt strategies of survivance to resist colonialism, recreate, articulate, and enact their identities as Māori. The liminal space, theorised as a site of influence in this study, is where mātanga-waenga (experts of mātauranga Māori and liminality), can enhance positive Māori identities and cultural connectedness in Māori youth who offend.