Some of 4000 unmarked graves around Aotearoa are finally being linked to family members after the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.
Specifically, these were unmarked graves linked to psychiatric hospitals in Tokanui, Porirua, Christchurch, Hokitika and Waitati.
Porirua cemetery alone held more than 1800.
Liz Wade’s great, great grandfather John Douglass was one of those buried there without a headstone.
“It doesn’t feel right to me to just to have left him there,” she told 1News. “He just seemed to have disappeared.”
Her recent research of records suggests, “it must have been a case of dementia and blindness and old age that caused his family to have him sent to the Porirua asylum, he was terribly unwell”.
The Government has allocated up to $50,000 to each council to memorialise unmarked graves.
Porirua recently released a list of names of the dead to find families. Nearly 70 relatives have contacted the council in the last month many others were yet to be heard from.
“To do a significant and meaningful memorial for the families and for the community is going to cost a lot more than that [$50,000] to put on every single name, 1800 names and so we will be pushing for the government to give us more money,” Porirua cemeteries manager Daniel Chrisp said.
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In Christchurch’s Sydenham Cemetery, more than 760 were buried under bare grassed areas – mostly former Sunnyside mental hospital patients.
Cashmere Community Board member Keir Leslie told 1News: “A lot of the people who were buried here were older people who were suffering from mental health issues and that was really stigmatised.”
Despite unmarked graves being often unknown in Aotearoa, they have received international attention.
Canada’s report on more than 4000 unmarked graves of children at residential schools was released late last year, with the report referencing the thousands of unmarked graves here in New Zealand.
It cited the fact New Zealand been told twice by the Royal Commission to undertake an independent investigation, including “an independent advisory group to investigate potential unmarked graves and urupā at the sites of former psychiatric and psychopaedic hospitals, social welfare institutions or other relevant sites”.
But Minister Erica Stanford’s office said there was no Budget 2025 money for that, although councils could use some of their $50,000 allocation to try to investigate that themselves.