Speakers and panelists at 6 November 2025 hui marking 70 years since the passing of the Adoption Act 1955 include:
Tiffany Burton is a researcher and intercountry adoptee whose work explores the emotional, cultural, and systemic dimensions of adoption. Adopted from the United States and raised in a Māori family, her research challenges dominant narratives of seamless integration and reframes adoption through the lens of identity, belonging, and relational justice. Her work, grounded in personal experience and qualitative life-story interviews, critiques the colonial and assimilationist logics embedded in adoption law and policy in New Zealand. Her work calls for adoptee-led reform and invites readers to listen differently — to see adoption not as a closed legal act, but as a lifelong journey of reassembly, memory, and voice.
Dr Julia Cantrell was adopted shortly after birth in 1963 in Aotearoa New Zealand. The complexities of her lived experience as an adopted person and throughout reunion saw her increasing involvement in adoption issues in the 1990s and 2000s, chairing the Canterbury Adoption Awareness and Education Trust which produced the quarterly newsletter “issues” and ran two international adoption conferences in 1998 and 2005. Currently working as a person-centred counsellor in a large secondary school in Christchurch, last year Julia completed research into some of the impacts of closed adoption through the lens of adopted persons parenting their biological children across the lifespan. Here is the link to Julia’s doctoral thesis.
Dr Anne Else is an independent researcher and writer based in Wellington. Adopted at birth in Auckland in 1945, she found her birth mother in 1984. Her latest publication, with the assistance of Maria Haenga-Collins, is A Question of Adoption: Closed Stranger Adoption in New Zealand, 1944-1974 and Adoption, State Care, Donor Conception and Surrogacy, 1975–2022 (ebook, BWB 2023). She is also the author, co-author or commissioning editor of many other publications relating to the history of women and society in Aotearoa New Zealand, including a substantial number dealing with adoption and reproductive technology. Her prize-winning 2006 doctoral dissertation, ‘On Shifting Ground: Self-narrative, Feminist Theory and Writing Practice’, on women, feminism and writing in post-1945 New Zealand, includes a section based on her own adoption story: http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10063/237/thesis.pdf?sequence=1
Dr Maria Haenga-Collins (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Ngāi Tahu, Pākehā) is a lecturer and researcher at Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau / Auckland University of Technology. Maria teaches within the Psychotherapy and Counselling Department and has a background in social work, Māori-centred research, and Indigenous histories. As an adopted person, her work has particularly focused on Māori experiences of whāngai and adoption, with other research areas encompassing such topics as colonisation, ‘race’ and contemporary modes of racism, testimony, counselling/counsellor education, and Māori models of health and healing. Maria lives in Tāmaki Makau Rau and enjoys spending time riding horses, walking the dog, reading, and growing her te reo Māori with her husband, adult children, and mokopuna.
Dr Jenni Hohepa-Tupu, Māori (iwi unknown), Sāmoa, was adopted into a Pākehā family at birth. At age 12, she was voluntarily placed into State care by her adopted parents, and was later, fostered for life by the Hohepa whānau from Te Tai Tokerau. Of Māori and Sāmoan descent, Jenni continues to seek whakapapa connections, a journey she describes as a lifelong search for identity and self.
Jenni’s PhD research explores intergenerational narratives and the impact of adoption on Māori and their whānau. Adoption has profoundly shaped Jenni’s life, both through her own lived experience and through whāngai, having adopted her eldest mokopuna, now 24 and raised four mokopuna as whāngai. Her academic work is deeply personal, grounded in lived realities and cultural reclamation.
Frances Joychild KC is an Auckland based barrister working across New Zealand. Her focus is on public law, human rights and inquiry work, and has taken many test cases in these fields.
Frances acted for the Human Rights Commission when it intervened in the Adoption Action proceedings which Robert Ludbrook took for Adoption Action claiming the Adoption Act 1955 was unlawfully discriminatory. With the Commission’s help Adoption Action was successful, and the Tribunal issued a declaration that the Adoption Act 1955 was inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Frances has also been a Law Commissioner and undertaken inquiries including into the historic sexual abuse at Dilworth School and in relation to the Defence Force. In 2005 Frances was the Commissioner responsible for the Law Commission Report ‘ New Issues in Legal Parenthood’.
Dr Erica Newman is a descendant of a Māori adoptee; her mother was born in 1948 with her adoption processed in 1950. Erica is a Senior Lecturer in Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at Ōtākau Whakaihu Waka University of Otago. Her research areas are all aspects of adoption, whāngai, kinship and identity with a focus on indigenous perspectives. Erica was awarded a Marsden Fast Start to explore the intergenerational impact of the 1955 Adoption Act and to journey with descendants of Māori adoptees who are searching for their tūrangawaewae.
Dr Emma West’s (Ngāti Hine, Ngapuhi) doctorate examined the impact of past and present child welfare legislation on whakapapa knowledge. Her interest in this area stems from her lived experience as a Māori who was part of a closed adoption, where she was raised with non-Māori and non-kin. She grew up in and lives in the Waikato and is passionate about supporting other Māori adoptees. Recently, after 50 years of wondering, she learned the names of her tūpuna, marae, hapū and iwi. Emma’s September 2025 article, You’re not lost if you don’t know your pepeha, can be read here.
Jo Willis was adopted as an infant during the closed era of adoption practice in New Zealand. The impact of Jo’s adoption experience led her to be a passionate supporter of adopted people and advocate for legislative change. In 1985 the Adult Adoption Act was passed, and Jo began a career as an Adoption Social Worker, Counsellor and Senior Practitioner that spanned over 23 years. Jo is currently a Therapeutic and Leadership coach (MA in Coaching & Mentoring Practice, Dip in Counselling) specialising in adult adoption personal and professional development. She provides education to professionals including social workers, psychologists, counsellors and therapists on the ‘Lived Experience of Adoption’ to help them understand the unique experience and needs of this client group.
Jo co-authored the book ‘Adopted’ with Brigitta Baker published in August 2022 and is often asked to present at National and International Adoption conferences.
For more information contact: AdoptionActionInc@gmail.com