No not Once Were Warriors – I have not seen and will not watch this film nor have I or will I read the book.
No it was his Books In Homes Programme.
Whether it is working I don’t know but, then I think – was that the start of the Education of todays activists?
Damien Grant features this in todays very good opinion piece at Stuff and gives an indication how Books in Homes started and how a group of wealthy supporters came on board to help make it work and become a success story.
Here is the heading:
Damien Grant: How an author and billionaire changed the lives of thousands of Kiwi kids.
A couple of excerpts for context:
`OPINION: Early in the book Once Were Warriors Beth is watching television and notices that the houses on television are filled with books. She inspects the house she shares with Jake and comes to the realisation that there are no books. None of the houses Beth has ever lived in had books.‘
Another excerpt:
`Beth’s insight drove Duff to do something. He doesn’t merely want to observe. He wants to have an impact and putting books into houses was one way of achieving this. So, 31 years back, in the euphoria of this writing success, he began a program to do exactly that.‘
Then along came Financial support:
`This was the mid-1990s and Duff was the nation’s expert on issues facing Māori. A young child was murdered and Duff was on camera giving his perspective and the program caught the attention of Mainfreight founder Bruce Plested, who, thankfully for this story, is on the same bus. More on that in a moment.
Plested, as Duff tells it, “got my number from somewhere” and asked how he could help. The details get a little foggy here. We are going back over three decades. The takeaway is Plested sent Duff a cheque large enough to establish a trust that has endured and now runs a program in some 500 low-decile schools providing books to junior school students.
Interesting:
`Plested is a failed teacher; lasting only a year before leaving the classroom to the boardroom, but he retains the passion for education and places his money and energy where he believes it can achieve the most impact.’
Accoring to the piece Damien Grant found this out while on a bus from an unknown stating point in possibly the Netherlands to Amsterdam – with Duff, Plested and possibly others chatting at the back of the bus.
Link to Damien Grant’s full Opinion Piece today is here:
I leave you with the question I raised at or near the beginning of this post.
Did this `Books In Homes Programme’ educate the Activists of today?
No Minister 
PDM I would be surprised if any of today’s privileged activists come from lower decile homes supplied with Duffs books in homes.
Interesting how this also ties in with Donna Awatere’s very good reading program. A shame it was discredited due to her fraud.
I really liked Once Were Warriors. I used to live not far from where they filmed a bunch of it. Definitely Temuera Morrison’s best performance and of course with a young Cliff Curtis
Duff chatting is unlikely but he is an interesting man to converse with. You come away both enlightened and depressed in equal instalments.
The “books” thing was pushed hard by Sir Bob Jones and was, according to Duff some years ago, a success.
I also would be surprised if any of the spoiled rich brats now pretending to be “activists” were beneficiaries of the program although something-for-nothing is their catch-cry.
I think Duff lived the childhood nightmare. He got unlucky in some sort of property deal much later in life.