IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you look at the six video clips, read the short biographical information that you need to know for each before you look at the particular clips -- watch after reading each description below.
Look at six short video clips on how the film Once were warriors shows examples of how different members of the family seek to develop some sense of identity by referencing to different ideas (cultural meanings) Note the final key point in video 6 – Boogie says you “wear your patch (tattoo) on the inside” – the suggestion that it is internal identity resources that are so important.

Jake the ‘Mus': For Jake his self-understanding and self-expression seemed embedded mainly in interactions with his drinking mates. He liked to see himself reflected in the fear that other men showed when confronted by his aggression and awesome capacity to fight, and as the affable centre of attention when he hosted his hotel friends to after hours parties and sing-alongs in his home. The fearsome temper that was aroused when his macho image was questioned by his wife, Beth, suggested that no matter how much he might protest the opposite, he was not really happy or secure in the way he had become defined as ‘Jake the Mus'. When drunk and antagonised, he brutalised his wife, but he seemed to avoid any acknowledgment that ‘wife beater' was a component of his identity – this he could choose to ignore when he thought of himself as a genuine family man.

Beth: Beth appeared to love Jake and was happy when things were going well. But her experience of his brutality and his apparently greater commitment to his drinking mates than to his own children made her wonder whether she needed to break away from him and seek support elsewhere – perhaps within a traditional Maori community.

Nig: Jake's oldest son, Nig, found the social situation of the home revolting – particularly his father's behaviour. He left to seek some self-definition away from the family. But he found it hard to break away from the image of being ‘the son of Jake the Mus'. He did find an alternative identity of a type, but it was with a tough fringe group called the Brown Fists, with their studded leather vests and highly tattooed bodies and faces; its identity was heavily invested in distinctive clothing, personal appearance and ritualised behaviour. His initiation ceremony involved a beating at the hands of the group and getting a ‘patch' – a tattoo across his face. Jake is of course unimpressed with the tattoo.

Boogie: Jake's younger son, Mark (known as Boogie), was removed from the family into the custody of welfare – fallout from his seeking identity with youth involved in petty crime, stealing car radios. The failure of his badly beaten up mother to make a court appearance was the factor that influenced the juvenile court decision that nothing could be done to rehabilitate Boogie if he remained in the family home. Despite periodic fractious behaviour, Boogie learned something valuable from the supervisor of the remand home, who became a mentor for his troublesome young brood. He showed them that the future of the deprived ‘once were warriors' Maoris lay in cultivating an internal warriorship of the spirit. He encouraged the boys to ritualise their interior strength and courage in fearsome hakas – war dances as impressive as any by the legendary All Blacks. But he insisted that their energy had to be channelled into ‘inner resources', otherwise it would be wasted and misused in the spiralling violence that was already devastating the Maori community.

Grace: Jake's 13-year-old daughter, Grace, came across as perhaps the most attractive personality in the family. She was gentle and friendly. She was traumatised by the brutality in the family but seemed to remain optimistic about life.