The film We Were Dangerous follows a trio of delinquent girls determined to fight against New Zealand’s state care system in the 1950s.
Director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s father is a survivor of state care in schools in New Zealand having attended Owairaka Boys Home.
“As a result, I have seen the impacts of these schools in my own family, and with my personal relationship to my cultural identity,” she said.
The release of the film is timely as in late July, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state and faith-based care in New Zealand was released.
The report found the abuse affected around 250,000 people.
The commissioner admitted there was clear evidence of Māori being overrepresented in state and faith-based care as victims of the abuse.
Pasifika and disabled people were also overrepresented in these numbers.
Re: News spoke to Stewart-Te Whiu (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa) about the film, what it’s about and what she thinks of the current state care system.
What is We Were Dangerous about?
We Were Dangerous is a film for anyone who has ever felt marginalised, when they know in their heart there has never been anything wrong with them.
It’s about hope, girlhood, and a celebration of female friendships.
It’s a film about our power, and having autonomy over our own bodies. Layered underneath this, we also examine the impacts of colonisation on young women and our Indigenous Aotearoa New Zealand communities.
The story is fictional, but do we see the representation of what state care looked like in the 1950s?
I talked to my dad about it. He said that the matron was very, very accurate.
He said, there were people like that at his school.
We spoke to Leonie McInroe who’s a survivor, she was a part of our development of the script.
What she reassured us about was that the friendships were really real, and that something she never really talked about was the camaraderie between the people and the school.
She said they would burn their sanitary products on the incinerator, and they would stand around it and light their cigarettes off it.
I can’t say I have experienced that myself, I haven’t lived through that. And I have never been institutionalised in that sense.
What were your thoughts about the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the abuse in state care that was released in July? How did it make you feel?
To be honest, I cried.
There are a lot of similarities to what my dad went through.
He was a Māori boy in two of the Levin boy’s homes as well as the Owairaka one.
Have we as a country learned anything from the history of state care?
No.
I think there are some really dangerous people in leadership positions in Parliament at the moment, very, very dangerous people with really dangerous ideology, which people use to piggyback on their own racist or homophobic or misogynistic beliefs about the world. I find that really upsetting.
I’m hoping that the response to this report from the media and from the general population will really make them rethink that maybe the way we’ve been doing shit isn’t f**king working and we need to rethink our entire approach.
In an ideal world, how would you like to see the state care system improved?
I think statistics are so highly in favour of Māori being in these systems, that perhaps we should look at Māori running them.
Looking at reconnecting these kids with who they are and where they come from.
It runs pretty deep, and it’s gonna take a long time to fix. But I think it can be fixed.
We’re not all born equal. It’s just a fact.
It’s about balancing that, and the different needs of people, everyone’s needs are going to be different, too.
I think that’s complicated. And it’s going to require a huge reset of the system, which will terrify people, but I think it needs to happen. There’s a lot that needs to change.
Why was it so important for you to add touches of humour and comedy to such a taumaha (heavy, weighted) topic like state care?
I think it makes it more accessible to people.
I don’t think people want to be told off for something their ancestors did and I don’t think people necessarily want to relive some of their deepest traumas.
Comedy is a really beautiful way to lighten the load.
