The numbers are stark: more than two-thirds of women in prison are Māori. Three-quarters of those women have recent diagnoses of mental health issues and 80% have substance-use problems. It’s easier to go back to prison than stay out.
Motuhaketanga, the new two-part documentary by producer-director Kathleen Mantel (Ngāti Kahungunu) explores what it takes to break the cycle by following three women: Arohatonu, Tristin and Lesley. The first two are mothers and they all share a background of trauma, alcohol and drug abuse.
“I wanted to use the research, but I wanted to show the people behind this research,” says Mantel. “I met lots of women inside and outside prison – and the people that I met reflected the research. Basically, what we are doing is locking up mentally ill, traumatised women as punishment, then sort of letting them out and hopefully they’ll be all good.
“But it’s a broken system. What I found is that a lot of the women inside were autistic or had mental health problems or had massive trauma – and, yes, they did crime. What I started to understand was that it wasn’t really a documentary about women in prison and it wasn’t a documentary about drug addiction. It was a documentary about trauma, intergenerational trauma. And motherhood, because when you take a woman away from her family it affects a lot.”
Getting access to the prisons – we see Arohatonu and Tristin working their “trusted jobs” (positions inmates are given for good behaviour) as they near release – was, says Mantel, a difficult and bureaucratic process. But perhaps the greater achievement was the access she was granted to the women’s lives. They are returning to whānau they harmed or were harmed by and the camera is present for authetically difficult and delicate moments.
Notably, there is no narration and little in the way of statistics. Exposition comes almost entirely by way of the accounts of the women themselves and, as the story moves on, those around them.
“I’ve made documentaries for 25 years or 30 years,” says Mantel. “And sometimes it’s hard to get hold of people, or people are not sure whether they want to do it, or they change their mind. These women are committed. They want to tell their story. I suppose they want to be a voice for other women that they know have been through similar things. They want their voice to be heard, and I didn’t want anyone else to come in the way of that.”
There are bright spots on the way to a cautiously uplifting conclusion. In particular, Rhonda Zielinski-Toki (“Whaea Rhonda”), manager of the Whakaoranga Whānau Recovery Hub in Kaikohe, gives Lesley a place to be on release that’s not just another sketchy motel in Auckland.
“Rhonda’s great,” Mantel agrees. “But there’s not enough Rhondas. Especially out of the main cities, there’s not the support. I don’t know how many psychologists there are in the Far North, but not many.
“Why isn’t there enough money to support people and their mental health? We should be wrapping around people who need it. We shouldn’t be locking them up and just hoping that after a couple of years they’ll come out and everything will be sweet as. It’s not even about just society acknowledging that. It’s about whānau as well.”
Part one of Motuhaketanga screens on Whakaata Māori at 8.30pm on Monday, June 23.
