To feed, to nourish, to nurture.
That is one translation of the word whāngai. It is also the name of the Māori custom where a child is brought up by someone other than their birth parents – usually another relative.
The child grows up with full knowledge of who their biological parents and siblings are.
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That will be the case for the whānau in the Sharing the Love documentary released today by the Herald. It follows Wellington couple Tu and Riann Umaga-Marshall who unexpectedly become pregnant for the fourth time. They choose to whāngai their child to Riann's brother Desmond Mihaere and his wife Luana who have been trying for a baby unsuccessfully for 13 years.
Reasons to whāngai include the birth parents financially or emotionally struggling, whāngai parents not being able to conceive or the death of a parent. Historically elders would whāngai a child to teach them tikanga and cultural history, however this is less common now.
Whāngai is not legally recognised, but some families who whāngai a child also legally adopt them.
Neither Statistics NZ, the Ministry for Children Oranga Tamariki nor the Maori Land Court hold statistics on whāngai children.
Senior lecturer of Māori studies at Auckland University Hone Sadler knows about whāngai better than most - he's whāngai eight children from within his family and mentored a handful more on Māori tikanga and culture.
He took on his cousin's five children when he was just 24 as she struggled with some personal issues.
Sadler's three nieces were whāngai by his parents as toddlers when their 27-year-old dad, Sadler's brother, died of cancer in 1976. When Sadler's parents' health deteriorated the nieces came to live with Sadler intermittently from 1993 and permanently from 1996 when he was 48.
"My nieces knew we were their uncles and aunties and knew they were a generation younger. They still referred to my parents as mum and dad.
"It was difficult because I had to provide for everything. But I was lucky I was in a steady job. I gave up drinking alcohol and smoking 30 years ago.
"I knew if I was to care for these children I needed to be settled and in control of my faculties."
Now aged 68, Sadler has given up caring for children for a while as he lives in Tapuhi, a tiny town in Northland, then travels to Auckland and stays in Grey Lynn three days a week while he teaches at the university. He is also the leader of the Ngāpuhi treaty negotiations authority Tūhoronuku.
But he has remained a parent to his nieces and a grandfather for their children.
"I've dedicated my life to Ngāpuhi and to whāngai. It's part of the caring, the manaakitanga, all those values. It's ingrained in you.
"It takes more than one, it takes a village to raise a child, I believe in that. The children become taonga rather than a possession. They belong to the whole of that community."
Radio broadcaster Stacey Morrison, who narrated Sharing the Love, "cried her face off" when she first watched the documentary.
It struck a chord with Morrison as a woman and a mother - but also as someone who had been influenced by whāngai. Both her grandpa and grandma had been whāngai as children. Her grandpa was given to his aunt as she could not have children. Morrison's grandma's mum had died when she was a baby and she had been brought up by her grandfather.
Her grandparents wanted to whāngai Morrison when she was born. But her mum, who was just 17 at the time, said no.
"I think it's really important that we understand this tradition. It's a way we strengthen our families," Morrison told the Herald.
"It's also about trusting that Māori tradition has rationale and practicality. It's not just airy fairy we decided to do this.
"If a baby can be brought up where the parents are able to look after them, are equipped and able to have them, that's better for everyone."
To understand whāngai you must think of the wider family of grandparents, uncles and aunts as having the same responsibilities to a child as the parents, Sadler explained. But since the 1940s when the drift of Māori to urban areas began, the wider whānau unit had been broken down and support structures had weakened.
Whāngai used to be more common, but times had changed and the practice was probably decreasing, Sadler said.
People were also having smaller families so there were fewer children around.
"Large families now are four children. In my birth family we had a large family of 10 and my mother had large family of 21. Now my sister has just two children.
"I hope whāngai will continue on and I think it will. You can't strain that out of a people's innate commitment to their culture. It's part and parcel of it."
Inheritance was the biggest issue whāngai children faced, Sadler said. Under Māori tikanga whāngai children were entitled to the same share of inheritance from their whāngai parents as though they had been born to them.
Because whāngai is not recognised in Pākehā law, inheritance was often left up to the discretion of the family, which made ripe ground for disagreement, Sadler said.
"Whāngai is informal from a Pākehā law perspective, but it's not informal as far as Māori are concerned.
"Around inheritance is where most of the problem arises.
"Some people accept their whāngai inherit certain privileges and access to properties. But others don't necessarily agree to that and that's where conflict arises."
The Māori Land Court acknowledges whāngai children as having rights to inheritance so they can inherit the lands of their whāngai parents. A judge will make a decision based on the circumstances that person was whāngai, whether or not whānau accept them as being a whāngai, whether they received Māori land from their birth parents and the extent the whāngai will receive income from the land.
In the last 10 years 19 succession applications have been filed which included a request to determine whāngai entitlements.
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