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At the time of the hearing Dr Alison Green (Ngati Awa (Ngati Pukeko), Ngati Ranginui (Ngaitamarawaho) Ngaiterangi (Ngaitukairangi)) was a researcher at Te Kotahi Research Institute, University of Waikato. She holds a PhD in Māori and Indigenous Development from the University of Waikato. Dr Green is the recipient of the inaugural international Indigenous Misiweskamin Postdoctoral Fellowship to the University of Saskatchewan. Her postdoctoral research compares legislation and policy for the removal of indigenous children from families in Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada.  She drew on her own life experience of closed adoption in 1958, and the racist attitudes that underpinned such practice at that time.  She reflected on her whakapapa as a means of illustrating the intergenerational impacts of colonialism, legislative settings, on her own whānau (through to current involvement with the State care system) in the context of different pathways through State care, which have led to varying impacts and outcomes, many of which are negative within members of her whānau.