Last month I had the pleasure of meeting a young man who lived with us as a teenager.

Actually, he is no longer the youngest, but a 53-year-old grandfather.

I got married at 22 and my wife and I started fostering two years later when our baby was 6 months old. We had four to six children with us, ranging in age from 8 to 16. What on earth were we thinking? It was no surprise that we only lasted six months as foster children.

Four years later, we did it again and set up a home for teenagers who needed extra support as they grew up. This time we were smarter and brought in some single friends to help us with the stress. This time we lasted three years.

In both attempts to take in young people, one of the things that struck me was how important the bond with the family is.

We could love them, feed them, clothe them, support them and guide them, but they still had their families that they desperately wanted to be a part of.

Authorities have not always valued Māori families highly over the years. Missionaries, educators and politicians believed that the Māori house prevented conversion to Christianity, hindered academic success and prevented assimilation.

In the 1980s I often heard the statement, “If we can just get them away from their family, we might have a chance.” It is the height of arrogance to think we know what is best for someone else’s family. In my early 20s I once said those exact words to a fellow youth worker in Porirua. Thankfully he admonished me and told me that our clients’ families will always be there and that our job is to support families and help them to flourish.

This was a turning point for me in the way I viewed youth work. I had been repeating that sad old cliche that had become normalised due to the false assumption that the problem for many struggling Māori was the family environment.

Neither poverty nor hopelessness, nor mental illness or addiction, nor the collapse of support structures.

I remember arguing with another foster parent when he said he was looking after a young person because his family didn’t want him. I took offense and argued with him until I realized we were talking about two different things.

He talked about the child’s parents and I talked about the child’s whānau – the extended group of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

I’m not naive. I know that sometimes parents are not the right people to raise their children, but this number is far smaller than the hundreds of thousands who have ended up in foster care since 1950 – many of them Māori, and many of them could have been placed in their extended families.

The Coalition Government’s attempt to remove the reference to the Treaty of Waitangi from the Oranga Tamariki Act is based on the claim that it puts race above the welfare of the child.

That is fundamentally wrong, because this is not about race, but about relationships. And not just any relationships, but about kinship.

Iwi and hapū issues are not based on race, but on the child being descended from the same ancestor. Every single member of my marae is descended from one of my two great-great grandfathers.

Even if I don’t like some of them or even know who they are, I have a duty to them because they are my relatives. Politicians and the media may call these children Māori, but they are Māori because they are Ngā Puhi or Ngāti Porou or Tūhoe or one of the 50 other iwi named after an ancestor.

Child protection expert Prof Emily Keddell of the University of Otago summarised section 7aa as giving practical effect to the Treaty by ‘measuring and reducing inequalities for Māori, creating partnerships with iwi and Māori organisations, delegating functions of the Act to Māori organisations and ensuring the cultural competence of staff’.

Leaders of the Iwi Leaders Forum are fighting the repeal of section 7aa because it gives them the opportunity to hold Oranga Tamariki to account for the behaviour of their loved ones and to get involved in their care when the nuclear family breaks down.

Revoking the responsibilities and obligations of the Treaty of Waitangi could have detrimental effects for future generations, as New Zealand’s past has shown. We must learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them.

• Dr Anaru Eketone is an Associate Professor in the Social and Community Work Program at the University of Otago.