With government funding drying up and their last staff member forced to resign, the future of Aotearoa\u2019s only nationwide self-defence network hangs in the balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No matter how old the students are, every Kia Haumaru class starts the same. \u201cYou walk in and everyone\u2019s quiet and everyone\u2019s gone shy, they are nervous because they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re about to get into,\u201d says Hawke\u2019s Bay kaiako Brie Sergeant. By the end of the course, it is a different story. \u201cThey\u2019re all yelling, they\u2019re full of energy and they are just so confident in themselves.\u201d The transformation is such that participants have been known to disclose trauma from their pasts to teachers, sometimes it\u2019s first time they\u2019ve ever shared their experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey feel they can confide in us,\u201d says Sergeant. \u201cThey just feel that much more supported, that much more heard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For nearly 40 years, Kia Haumaru, formerly known as the Women\u2019s Self Defence Network \u2013 W\u0101hine Toa, has taught girls, women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community to stick up for themselves, with a network of kaiako across the country teaching empowerment self-defence to an average of 15,000 people a year. \u201cSelf defence is usually some guy from a martial arts organisation,\u201d explains T\u0101maki Makaurau kaiako Vivian Chandra, \u201cbut we are trained, accredited women and non-binary people, and we do it all with a feminist lens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vivian Chandra and Julie Poirier of Kia Haumaru<\/p>\n
With its roots in second-wave feminism, the self-defence class has evolved well beyond judo moves and putting keys between your fingers over the last few decades. \u201cWe actually have more conversations now than we do physical moves,\u201d says Sergeant. \u201cEveryone learns that we have a right to be safe and we have a right to use our voice, and that includes in conversations about pornography, deep fakes and AI.\u201d Chandra remembers having to remove a teaching scenario about a stranger breathing down a landline, because nobody used them anymore.<\/p>\n
The type of people who might take a self defence class also reflects a more inclusive Aotearoa, with Kia Haumaru welcoming students from the deaf and blind community, hosting Pride events around the country, and holding free classes for the Muslim community following the March 15 terror attacks. \u201cIt bears repeating that the only people who can stop violence is those who choose to use violence,\u201d says co-chair Julie Poirier. \u201cBut of course, it makes sense to still learn to resist, because knowing what you can do really helps boost your confidence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n