“I was just sick of being angry.”

Hamuera grew up in Moerewa. “It was an awesome place to grow up, but it was pretty rough”, he says. “If you watched ‘Once Were Warriors,’ that’s how we grew up, you know. But that’s how it was for all of us in our town, that was our normal.”

Hamuera walked in off the street and self-referred to our Tāne Non-violence Programme, a free 8 to 12-week programme that supports tāne to stop using violence, let go of anger and build healthy relationships.

He says he wanted to change from being angry all the time and to be a better father and partner. “I was just sick of being angry and taking it out on my missus and kids. I would snap and just belt them just because I felt like it. And I didn’t really know how to fix what was wrong with me. Since doing the programme and going back to te ao Māori, it just made me want to be different. I’ve got four girls, and I don’t want them to marry what I was, so yeah, that was the turning point.”

Hamuera believes you’ve got to want to change, otherwise you won’t. “Why it worked so good for me is because I wanted to do it. You got to want to do it, because it’s not easy. You gotta be open and be pono, you know, don’t be teka. So I went there on my own because I wanted to, I wanted help.”

Now, he appreciates having his Kaiako available whenever he needs someone to talk to. “For me, the biggest thing is having someone on the outside. There’s no bias. I feel safe with the bro and to know that I can just ring him or go and see him, that really helps.”

Hamuera says that the programme has transformed his life and the lives of his whanau and mates too. “Yeah, it’s changed my whole family. Not just me, some of my brothers too. I’m like, bro, if I can do this, you can too. I was the worst of us. Now I’m trying to be the best of us. I’m saying, ‘Bro, you don’t have to be like that. We don’t gotta be like this’.”

*A stock image used to protect privacy.