APPENDICES 6b Ron's Story NOTES ON RON'S INTERVIEW Ron and I had had no professional or personal contact prior to my contacting him by telephone to arrange the interview. When I arrived to see Ron, he took me through the building and introduced me to staff and whanau who were there. We shared a cup of tea and some cake before beginning the interview. Ron took the opportunity to gently interview me before I had the chance to interview him. He then introduced himself through his iwi affiliations and background. The interview with Ron was open and emotional at times. Ron made it clear that he had not articulated the basis of his philosophy, theory and practice of counselling as a whole before. He was clearly exploring and developing his own understandings, of himself and his practice of counselling, as we talked. I was interested in what Ron did in his counselling practice and why he did what he did. Ron told me this and frequently also went a step further, attempting to explain what he did and why he did it in terms of accepted Western theories and practices. That is, he drew parallels between his own practice as a Maori counsellor, and established Western practices. It may have been that Ron felt a need to justify his own theory and practice by linking it with recognised and published Western theory and practice of counselling. It may also have been that Ron was formulating his own bicultural models of counselling theory and practice. Alternatively, Ron may have been· better able to articulate Western theory in a cogent and coherent way, while he was still exploring the Maori basis of his practice, 413 6b Ron's Story and often did not have a Maori 'framework' within which to clearly . articulate and justify this. 414 6b Ron's Story RON'S STORY In this section, some of the influences on Ron 's life and work up to the present are outlined. Ron belongs to the Muaupoko iwi. At the time of writing, Ron is 42 years old and lives in a rented two-bedroom home, which he shares with his uncle and Cla young fella. who needs somewhere to stay. " Ron works with Yvonne in the Levin Alcohol and Drug (A & D) Centre. Ron was born in Wellington, but was raised in Levin, living with his Pakeha mother and Muaupoko father throughout his childhood and teenage years. Brought up in the Catholic faith as one of eight children, Ron is also the eldest of the family's five sons. He regards the work his parents did raising their family with respect, a respect which is generalised to the work of parents. R: I look at my parents. I mean, they ran a brilliant house, and I we never wanted. And, I mean, I can remember when Dad was earning 16 pound a week, and he had eight kids. And he had to clothe them, feed them educate them, pay off the house. On 16 pound a week, and they did it. ., To me the heroes of our society are the mums and dads. Purpose " ..this was the start of the understanding of purpose. " As a teenager in the 1960s, Ron was involved in the drug culture of 415 6b Ron's Story the time. His exp eriences during this phase of his life led him on a long and eventful, although not always pleasant, journey in the physical and spiritual sense. The journey eventually led Ron back to his home country and town, and to the Christian faith. R: I was ...basically right into the hippy thing, and it was sex and drugs and rock and roll. And, umm, I travelled all over Asia and Australia and, umm, America and places. And at the end of that, in, umm, 1976, I found myself destitute on a beach in Northern Queensland, by Townsville. And so I went along to the local Sallys ... the Salvation Army, to beg a feed and shelter. And a condition of getting a feed and shelter was that you had to do the drug and alcohol programme. And of course, it's actually quite a common strategy among the people on the street, to actually go through these programmes so that you can get a feed and a place to stay. And so all you do is you go along and you say " Hallelujah" and " Isn't it wonderful" and then you go away and get pissed [drunk] and then you come back the next night. And it's a survival mechanism and I acknowledge that and I think, "Good on ya; if that's how you survive then that's how you've gotta survive." And then when I came back to New Zealand I did feel right from the beginning that this was the start of the understanding of purpose for me. That God had some purpose in it. And I knew that I was, that there was a large element of being blessed by virtue of the fact that the Sallys were there; to give me shelter and food and purpose, and like something to do with my hands all day, and, and of 416 6b Ron's Story course being Salvation Anny, a lot of, umm, scriptural stuff;and the AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] programme is a spiritual programme. So it started stirring the spiritual within me. " ... we are.. the living fa ce of our fa ther... " Ron identifies a number of exp licit happenings which led him to where he is working now. His own history with drugs and the hippy lifesyle provided a fo rm of exp eriential training and understanding of the substance abuse area, his growing strength in Christianityalso led him to fe el, "the calling to do the work " However, it was the death of his fa ther which gave Ron the impetus and motivation to 'settle down ' and to take his role, as his fa ther's son and as the eldest male in that line, seriously. R: When I came back to New Zealand, I felt the calling to do the work. And I thought, "Well if I'm going to do it, I'd better go and get some training." So I wrote to NSAD [National Society for Alcohol and Drugs], and at that time the Chief Executive and the, ahh, the Director, was a real character fella ...and he said, "Oh look, Ron, forget all that bloody intellectual crap. Come down here and I'll give you a job." So there I was sort of, a week or two later, sitting in an office, ahh, counselling drug addicts. Ab, and about three months later I was actually running the methadone clinic in the Wellington area. See what happened is, umm ... See my father died in 1986; up till that time I was footloose and fancy free, and I was a teenager in the 60s so I was basically getting to be an older hippy by that time. And 417 6b Ron's Story that was really very much where I was at. Umm, and I tended to be wandering and all that. Umm, and when Dad died, well obviously I'm his eldest son and that. I actually found it extremely difficult after living a fancy free life and no commitments and that sort of thing; and it's probably been the very best thing that's ever happened to me because it's quietened me down. I: So you sort of had that responsibility of upholding the mana of your whanau after your father died? R: Yes, of course. Yeah. I: Did you sort of, did you feel that yourself? Or were you told that? Or. ..[int erruption]. R: No, well my family, well my family, we're a family of real strong nuts; and no one can tell us anything, and unless we're actually committed from ourselves inside ourselves. Anyone can tell us anything and we'll just go and do exactly what we want to. Because it was something that came, it was something that I didn't actually seek; it just, like welled up inside me. It was important to do. I knew that I had to take Dad's place. Or me and my other brothers. I've got four brothers, so he had five sons and we are now the face of our father, the living face of our father. And it's really important for us to do that, I feel. This is what I was meant to do. There was something inside that connected me to my people which I had to express. 418 6b Ron's Story Ran fe els that the nature of his past, and who he is, has led him to where he is presently working. The area covered by the Levin Alcohol and Drug Centre includes Ran 's own tribal boundaries, so he is working on his turangawaewae, amongst his own people. In a sense, he is also now able to carry the responsibilities of wearing the mantle of leadership left to him by his fa ther. Ran also sees his work at the centre as clearly connected to the 'quest fo r meaning', which he fe els characterised the hipp ie portion of his life. Christianity too has led Ran to where he is now. In effect, a number of different past exp eriences and present and future responsibilities have led to Ran 's placement in his present position. The sp iritual intentionality of the path that he is on gives Ran a strong conviction in his work.