Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff is on the subject of members of a destitute Maori family in New Zealand who endure vicious mistreatment at the hands of the father. Duff alludes to the black African-American experience openly in comparison to the Maori, thus breaking down the so-called Dominant/Other binary that is, treating the dominating and dominated as diametrical oppositions and explores Other/Other relations. Race and color intersect history and culture in defining the Maori in their opposition to whiteness, however they do not totally align themselves with the black "Negro" pole.
By inverting the power dynamic and putting the Maori in the role of the oppressor, as well as modifying Negro, with "poor" there is a subtle "mothering" and hence subordindinating of the African American, an implied assertion of non-alignment. Duff presents a complicated relationship of colored, visual cohesion and classification. Problematically, Beth defines the Maori not as "in between" whiteness and blackness bridging but not transcending the black white dialectic.
The book is Alan Duff's distressing revelation of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English invasion. In text that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live. Turning over both the rich textures of Maori convention and the wounds left by its deficiency, Once Were Warriors is a work of art of unblinking realism, appealing energy, and large sorrow. In his regular columns in Wellington's Evening Post and other newspapers, Duff contends Maoris must make their way in the existing world.
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