Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff is the first installment of a historical fiction trilogy originally published in 1990 that explores the lives of a Māori family in early 1990s New Zealand. In the first year of its publication, it won the PEN Best First Book award and was the runner-up for the Goodman Fielder Wattie Award. In 1994, Once Were Warriors was optioned and made into a movie of the same name, which won Best Film at the Durban International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, New Zealand Film and Television Awards, as well as the Rotterdam Film Festival, and was nominated for the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics’ Grand Prix.

Duff is a New Zealand author and newspaper columnist at The Evening Post and the New Zealand Herald. Duff’s father was a forestry scientist, while his mother is of Ngāti Rangitihi and Ngāti Tūwharetoa descent. When he was 10 years old, he moved in with his Māori aunt and uncle following his parents’ divorce. His childhood was a troubled one and informed many of the events in Once Were Warriors, though the novel is historical fiction and not a biographical account. From his first-hand experience, Duff attends to the social hardships that plague some Māori communities throughout his novel: the loss of cultural identity and history, the untreated intergenerational trauma, and cyclical addictions.

This study guide refers to the Once Were Warriors First Vintage International Edition, published in 1995.

Language Note: The author abstains from using a macron for terms such as “Maori” and “Pakeha,” which are anglicized versions of the preferred and more accurate terms “Māori” and “Pākeha”; the author’s spelling is retained only in direct quotation in this guide. The author’s reproduction of dialect through phonetic spelling and abbreviations is also retained in direct quotations.

Content Warning: The novel features depictions of alcohol addiction, drug abuse, violence, domestic abuse, rape, and suicide. The novel also uses racist terms to refer to Chinese people which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Plot Summary

From her kitchen window, Beth Heke struggles to reconcile the dichotomy between the squalor, violence, and struggles of her fellow Māori in their state-housed neighborhood, Pine Block, and the rich estate of the Trambert family. When Jake, Beth’s husband, returns from work, it’s with a giddy announcement that he’s been fired from his job and, like many others in their community, will now live on the unemployment dole with no intention of finding a new job. Later, they have a party. The two are drunk and fight, and Jake eventually beats Beth late into the night. One of Beth and Jake’s sons, Boogie, has a court appearance the following day about petty theft which Beth and Jake miss. The court case goes badly, and Boogie is sent to a Boys Home.

Beth is distraught at having failed her son but endeavors to save enough money so that she and the rest of the family can visit him. Jake, meanwhile, easily dismisses Boogie’s absence since he does not much care for a son who is too sensitive to resemble him. Instead, Jake goes to the bar he often frequents, McClutchy’s, to experience the reverence others give him and the violence the bar promises. Jake is always up for a fight and has a reputation for his unbeatable strength. He ends the night by beating someone in the bathroom and intimidating Jimmy Bad Horse—the leader of a local Māori gang, the Brown Fist—into leaving the bar.

Meanwhile, Grace Heke, Jake and Beth’s daughter, trespasses on the Trambert estate to witness how the “other side” lives and is distraught at what she sees: the kind of comfortable life that she has never known. When she returns home, Jake has brought his drunken friends back to their house for more drinking. That night, a man whom Grace believes might be Jake rapes her in the room that she shares with the youngest Heke children.

Three months later, Beth has saved up enough money to visit Boogie at the Boys Home by not drinking alcohol. The whole family, except for the eldest son, Nig, goes on the trip with an intricate picnic for which Beth paid. On the way, they encounter rich, Pākeha—or, white—neighborhoods and Beth’s old village that maintained Māori traditions and culture. These two sights enrage Jake and make him feel inferior for being poor, having to rent a car instead of owning one, and being reminded of his childhood where he was stigmatized for having an enslaved person as an ancestor. The trip derails from its destination, and the family never visits Boogie in the end. Instead, Jake takes them all to McClutchy’s. He and (eventually) Beth get drunk, and the people at the bar devour the picnic unceremoniously.

The children return home without their parents, and Grace meets with her friend, Toot. She intimates that the man who raped her the first time has done so more than once since. When she leaves Toot, she goes once more to the Trambert estate, thinking of wasted potential. She hangs herself from their tree. The male elders of Beth’s clan take charge of Grace’s funeral, and for three days, they conduct a traditional Māori funeral, filled with hymns, hakas (a ceremonial dance), and speeches spoken in their ancestral language, which Beth and her family do not understand. Though Beth grieves for her lost daughter, she finds solace and strength in their traditions.

Nig misses his younger sister’s funeral because he’s being inducted into the Brown Fist gang, and Jimmy Bad Horse does not allow him to go to Grace’s burial when Nig requests it. Beth, meanwhile, is given Grace’s suicide note, which details Jake as her possible rapist. Beth accuses Jake in front of all his friends, who hitherto sympathized with his loss. Jake is shaken both by the accusation and by how one of his friends managed to defeat him with one punch. He becomes unhoused as he is no longer welcome in Beth’s house, at his friend’s home, or in the shared home for people with alcohol addictions. He builds a hut in Samuel Marsden Park and establishes a friendship with a street kid named Cody McClean.

After Jake leaves, Beth undertakes a change in her community by creating a “Self-help” movement. She feeds the hungry children, sets up a library in her living room with teach-yourself books, and has weekly gatherings at her home led by the paramount chief, Te Tupaea, so that he can teach the Māori of Pine Block about their history and culture. Gradually, hundreds come to participate in these meetings and reclaim their sense of identity. When Nig dies in a gang fight, the funeral that his mother holds for him has 400 people coming together, grieving but proud. From the forest bordering the cemetery, Jake looks on and weeps for the loss of his son, as 400 voices sing and send off Nig to his ancestors.