Reimagining Justice

In this episode, Kahu engages in wānanga with two kaikōrero advocates who are reimagining justice in Aotearoa - Awatea Mita and Emmy Rakete.

Content warning: Includes discussion of prisons, psychological and physical abuse.

In this episode, Kahu engages in wānanga with two kaikōrero advocates who are reimagining justice in Aotearoa - Awatea Mita and Emmy Rakete. It's a tough listen, especially for whānau Māori, but understanding where we are and where we've come from is necessary to begin planning for where we will go.

Corrections comment in full.

Reimagining Justice

by Briar Pomana

In pre-colonial Aotearoa, prisons were essentially non-existent. Traditional Māori society mainly revolved around whakapapa, whānau and kawanatanga.

In fact, the first prisons in Aotearoa were filled by Pākehā. Today, due to overpopulation and over-representation of Māori in prisons, most whānau Māori can name at least one whānaunga inside behind bars.

Delving deeper into these overwhelming statistics, episode five of He Kākano Ahau traces the history of prisons in Aotearoa and the continual failure of these institutes, especially for whānau Māori.

Although Māori only account for around 17% of the general population of New Zealand, there is a disproportionate number of Māori in penal institutions across the country. Māori make up 52.9% of the prison population according to September 2020 statistics from Ara Poutama / Department of Corrections.

Knowing what it looks and feels like to operate within a prison and the judicial system, Awatea Mita (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngai Te Rangi) does a lot of mahi in and around prisons, specifically with wāhine Māori. Having been previously incarcerated herself, she recounts arriving and looking around at the other women in prison, only to be met back with eyes similar to her own, those of wāhine Māori.

"As Māori women, as the most marginalised community in this country, brought up under that cloak of colonisation that has a purpose of ensuring that you for one don't know your rights and if you do, that you're not going to fight for them. That's how that system can continue to be self-constituting and perpetuates itself because there's no one there to challenge it."

Fighting for this community and for these people is what Emmy Rakete, an uri from Ngapuhi, Te Rarawa and Ngā Kaimahi o Te Ao, does daily.

Whether this is with others from the organisation PAPA (People Against Prisons Aotearoa) or as a PhD student writing about the history of prisons, and their correlation with capitalism…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details