NZ's gang culture 'has to change' | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

Gangs and gang members can change their lifestyles and behaviour.

But that will only be achieved with community support, says one of New Zealand's foremost authorities on our gang culture.

As a keynote speaker at the annual Parihaka International Peace gathering, Black Power life member, grandfather and tough anti-P crusader Denis O'Reilly described  methamphetamine (P) as "gouging out New Zealand communities like a gigantic wave, wrecking families and leaving people with sores all over their faces".

Yesterday, Mr O'Reilly told the Chronicle he  would not mince his words to his Parihaka audience about Maori gangs and the drug meth.

"I will be talking about the young brains I've seen that have been fried and wrecked with meth use, and the young lives damaged through gangs. It is time for the dissolution of Maori gangs as they are."

 Lack of knowledge, education, understanding and serious family values were at the basis of the gangs and drug use, he said.

 At Parihaka today, he hopes his speech titled The Dissolution of Maori Gangism and the Rise of Maori Whanau Ora  will get the message out.

 It was time we burnt all those terrible bridges leading to the destruction of young Maori and the hideous scourge of methamphetamine, he said.

 He described his drive through the River City to Parihaka at the old pa in Taranaki as a "patch-free" and a with-or-without-an-H experience.

 Mr O'Reilly said he had spent many weeks with local Black Power after the murder of baby Jhia Te Tua  2 years ago.

After a wananga and much soul searching, he said the gang members  had come to the conclusion they were bad parents.

"But they love their children very much. It was really about setting up training for them, training in good parenting," he said.

 But the parenting training programme had no chance of getting off the ground, he said, no matter how hard he tried.

"It was seen as too risky politically. The reality is that no one wanted to deal with gangs in a positive way here."

The gang culture had to change, he said.

 One had to understand where the gang culture came from in order to get across and around the boundaries first, he said.

"The whole Maori gang thing, the Black Power and Mongrel Mob, came from the 1970s. It came directly from the North American gang culture. Maori were mugs following that North American model."

When he talked with gang members, they  told him how they wanted their children to have a good education, to have a drug-free and violence-free environment, he said.

"They know how counterproductive their gang life is. But trying to get politicians, national and local, to listen and to help is practically impossible."

 What would happen, for example, if Hone Harawira stepped into the Maori gang leadership void to lead Maori gangs away from their self-defeating behaviours and Gonville lifestyles, he asked.

"He could complement the political discipline of Tariana and Pita with a bit of good old Nga Puhi radicalism.

 "Get rid of meth. It's driving people to suicide, madness and people wasting their lives in jail.

"We need to engineer social change for all our young people."