Dave Letele joined Jane Yee on This is Kiwi (Image: Tina Tiller)

PartnersJune 26, 2023

This is Kiwi: Dave Letele just wants to help people

Staff writers

Dave Letele joined Jane Yee on This is Kiwi (Image: Tina Tiller)

A new series in partnership with Kiwibank, This is Kiwi celebrates extraordinary achievements by ordinary New Zealanders. In the first episode, host Jane Yee speaks to Dave Letele, winner of the 2022 Kiwibank Local Hero of the Year award.

Affectionately known as the Brown Buttabean, Dave Letele is a shining example of how one person can defy the odds to make a profound difference in the lives of others. He’s faced a number of challenges throughout his life, but refuses to let that adversity define him. A successful sporting career in both professional boxing and rugby league made his name well-known around Aotearoa, but it’s outside the boxing ring and off the field where he has found his true calling.

Dave knows the power of transformation, and set up the BBM (Buttabean Motivation) foundation for those who want to reclaim their health and future with free fitness classes, mentoring and nutritional guidance. As a community leader, he advocates tirelessly for rangatahi, empowering them to break free from the cycle of disadvantage and embrace a future filled with opportunity. All of this mahi led Letele to winning Kiwibank Local Hero of the Year in 2022.

Letele joined Jane Yee on The Spinoff’s new podcast in partnership with Kiwibank: This is Kiwi. Read an excerpt from the full interview below.

Jane Yee: I feel like we could probably do a Lord of the Rings style trilogy on all the things that you’ve achieved in your lifetime. But let’s start with being named Kiwibank Local Hero of the Year in 2022. Do you feel like a hero?

Dave Letele: I never think of myself as a hero. It was awesome to get that award, especially being nominated from the people that you serve, that was great, but I don’t think of myself as a hero.

You must be doing something right if you get named Local Hero of the Year. If I was someone coming up to you on the street, and I said “What is it that you do?” What would your answer be?

I help people. That’s it. We help give people a hand up. I was very blessed to have some people in my life that gave me a hand up. When I moved back here in 2014, I didn’t have one cent in my pocket and I was very depressed, hated my life. I was over 200 kilos, in bad shape physically and worse mentally, I didn’t have my children.

An old league friend opened up a gym called Habitat for Fitness in Kingsland. His name is PJ and he played league with me back in the day and when he saw me, he goes, “What the heck’s happened to you? Come I want to help you. I’m just opening a gym. If you turn up I’m going to help you.”

There was a handful of people that invested in me to give me a hand up with no expectation of anything in return. And that’s all we’re doing now, is paying it forward. So if people ask me what I do? I just help people.

How integral is that for you – in terms of your kaupapa in helping the community – the people that helped you to get to where you are?

I look at where we are now. We’re very blessed. We’re living a nice life with all my boys back and my wife and son, we’re helping all these people and doing all these great things in the community. But it wasn’t too long ago that me and my wife and three children were staying in a garage with no kitchen. There wasn’t too long before that where I was staying in a sleepout. In the community home in Clendon I was living with people just out of prison. So I never forget those times and the struggle.

But there were always people around that would come in, and who really helped me. People that would just turn up to my house and alter the way I was, would just give me 50 bucks or come over and bring some food, and it would always happen at just the right time. Because it was around those times where I was thinking, “Man, I can’t handle this, I can’t handle having no money. I can’t handle being broke”, and I was tempted to go do silly things. And always people came around just at the right times, through the grace of God, and just helped me. So that’s what we do now.

You’re an athlete – once an athlete, always an athlete – and you love exercise. But you must come across a lot of people who don’t have the same passion for exercise as you do?

Yeah, exercise for me is my therapy. I’m not training to have a six pack. I’m training to be happy, and to get frustrations out. When I started my journey, I got up off that single bed I was sleeping in, I borrowed my sister’s car, borrowed petrol money, which was humiliating, I drove to One Tree Hill and I went for a walk. I went for a walk around the summit, and it was such a beautiful place. While I was walking around the hill, I was no longer thinking about how crappy my life was. All I was thinking about was, “Man, this is a steep hill. Why did I choose this place?”

But afterwards, I had the natural endorphins of exercise running through my body, and my brain had a chance to rest. It wasn’t thinking about things so it could handle life for a little bit more. And that’s what I talk about with people. That’s what exercise is. It’s not about training for marathons, it’s going for a walk with your family somewhere beautiful to take your mind off things. That’s exercise, and it’s so beneficial for you once you get in the routine.

What’s the one thing that you would like everyone who’s listening to take away from this kōrero?

I just encourage everyone that’s going through tough times at the moment – and there’s lots of people going through tough times – I really want to encourage that greatness comes from the struggle. You’ve just got to embrace it and not be tempted to take shortcuts, because those shortcuts always go the long way around.

Keep working, you’ll get there and when you do get there, never forget where you were. It’s always good to come back and help others, and trust me when I say you’ll always be blessed in return. When you help others you’re going to be blessed tenfold. People over-complicate and think “I want to help as many people as he’s helping,” but go help one person and that feeling of helping one person will just fill your heart.

This interview has been shortened. To hear the full kōrero, listen to This is Kiwi wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thompson-Fawcett’s work is helping to indigenise urban planning (Image: Getty; additional design: Archi Banal)

ĀteaJune 22, 2023

Meet the woman putting culture at the heart of urban planning

Liam Rātana

Ātea editor

Thompson-Fawcett’s work is helping to indigenise urban planning (Image: Getty; additional design: Archi Banal)

Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett has focused her career on extending the decolonisation conversation into the processes of urban planning. Now, she’s been appointed to Poutoko Taiea at the University of Otago.

Entwining Indigenous knowledge, histories, values, and presence into the settler-colonial cities of Aotearoa New Zealand is at the heart of what Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett (Ngāti Whātua) does. It was her early life in South and Central Auckland, particularly events surrounding Takaparawhau, and the 506-day occupation of land overlooking Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour in the late 1970s, that laid the foundation for her career.

“I was a school child living less than 2km away from all this activity as it took place. It epitomised the fraught, enduring, haunting history of the land around the Ōrākei/Ōkahu Bay area, telling a damning story about how the ‘City of Auckland’ was fashioned, and has been reproduced ever since,” says Thompson-Fawcett.

“It seemed to me that the ongoing politics of place, and power injustices linked to the control of space were among the most important issues you could seek to unveil and repair in our society,” Thompson-Fawcett says.

Exposure to this large-scale Indigenous-led protest movement in New Zealand’s largest city grew Thompson-Fawcett’s understanding of the importance of place in the maintenance of Māori identity in urban areas. Revealing the power relations evident in the practices surrounding design and space, and then envisioning transformation that facilitates Māori aspirations of decolonisation and tino rangatiratanga in this space is what she’s dedicated her time to since.

“For me, Indigenous-led urban planning and development means working towards a built environment that activates Indigenous knowledge and practices, acknowledges the unique histories and presence of Indigenous peoples in locations that are now urban spaces, and respects the relationships between people, land, and communities,” she says.

Silo Park on Auckland’s Waterfront (Photo: Supplied)

Today, Indigenous futurity is at the heart of Thompson-Fawcett’s work. Keeping herself busy, the professor in the School of Geography is also currently the associate dean (Māori) in the Division of Humanities, and leader of the Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga “Toitū he Kāinga: Healthy Environmental Relationships in Urban Settings” research programme.

“The built environment is not just about physical spaces, it’s also about cultural spaces, and we need to create places that allow for the expression of Māori culture,” Thompson-Fawcett says “for example, urban environments that enable our rangatahi to speak their language, practise their tikanga, and be Māori in the city.”

Acknowledging the troubled past and present of Aotearoa New Zealand, Thompson-Fawcett believes that Indigenous-led urban planning and design has the potential to play a part in healing that trauma by honouring Indigenous identities, explaining: “I’m talking about embracing Indigenous aspirations from the past, present and future, and really envisioning how we can create opportunities that celebrate Indigenous cultures and histories, and weave them into the fabric of our cities.”

Recent work by Indigenous designers and planners has been delivering places in urban areas “where Indigenous people can see themselves, their narratives, and recognise they belong,” she says. The Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland rail system is one example. The redevelopment of the City’s railway stations incorporates te ao Māori in the design. Using culturally significant, locationally-specific themes connected to movement by waka, navigation via stars, the flow of waterways, local volcanic māunga and more, the new development reflects the journey of those travelling through the city.

In 2018 Professor Michelle Thompson-Fawcett received a Sustained Excellence award in the Kaupapa Māori category (Image: supplied).

Another example is the progress taking place in the city of Ōtautahi Christchurch, in response to post-earthquake reconstruction of the central area. The redevelopment of Te Papa Ōtākaro/the Avon River Precinct demonstrates the centrality of the river to both Māori and subsequent settlers. Building on the Indigenous values of the river as a food source has been a major focus. A reinvigorated two kilometre stretch of the waterway and its banks now incorporates an integrated cultural narrative along this shared public space.

“Such achievements signpost the many ways that the wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in colonised locations might be envisaged as part of urban design, planning, decision-taking and governance processes.”

She believes that real change requires education as well as advocacy, and her role as poutoko taiea at the University of Otago allows her to work with students who are up and coming urban and planning professionals and leaders. “It was the potential of teaching a decolonising and indigenising ethic that placed me in the University,” Thompson-Fawcett says. She stresses the need for urban and planning professionals to understand the history of colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand and recognise the critical importance of the role of tangata whenua in decision-making processes.

“When you’re teaching students who are going to be city makers, it’s really important that they understand the context of Aotearoa, they understand the histories of colonisation, and they understand the importance of working in partnership with Māori and having a really strong, committed and ethical practice around that,” she says.

Thompson-Fawcett’s work has made significant contributions to indigenous-led urban planning and decolonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her experiences growing up in South and Central Auckland and working with iwi and hapū inspired a commitment to incorporating Indigenous values in urban planning, one which she is passing on to those entering the field.

Through her various roles, Thompson-Fawcett is inspiring urban planning professionals to recognise the importance of Indigenous-led planning and design, and weaving Indigenous knowledge, histories, values and presence into the fabric of our cities.