Harm to a Māori child was understood as damage to the whole ancestral line

Evidence

The concept of whakapapa — genealogy, ancestry, the chain of descent from the atua (gods) and tūpuna (ancestors) through the present generation — positions the child as the latest link in an unbroken genealogical chain. The child carries whakapapa. To harm the child is to harm the whakapapa — to damage the ancestral line itself. — , The Rod and the Child, 5245

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines whakapapa and shows how genealogical identity transformed the moral weight of striking a child — worth keeping because it grounds the book’s thesis in a specific conceptual framework.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘child as treasure’ passages in the Māori framework and echoes ancestral-chain logic in other Indigenous child-rearing systems the series has covered. — connects to: Maori utu requires response to wrongs to restore cosmic balance — , A Year of World Stories, 12437