Gladiator: The Norm Hewitt Story

Despite going to a Māori school, by the time I left college being Māori was still foreign to me . . . because I didn't understand the culture, I wanted no part of Māoridom.

– Norm Hewitt, at the start of this clip

With every job there's a risk, the trick is minimising them.

– A prostitute working on the streets of Papatoetoe, quoted in The NZ Herald, 9 April 2005

South Auckland's becoming a doorway into bigger things, you know. They think 'oh well, now that I've got a little bit of experience, I'll head in for K Road. So it's about while you're catching them at the doorway, you can deter them to go somewhere else.

– Community worker Mama Tere Strickland, co-founder of agency Te Aronga Hou Inaianei

...[Hewitt] embraced Te Ao Māori after originally resenting the fact that he had little connection with it in his youth. Hewitt embraced others walking the same path, making a documentary exploring the experiences of South Auckland sex worker and LGBT advocate Mama Teri — a far cry from his All Black hard man days . . . Since then, he'd been involved in youth work, drug and alcohol prevention and had opened a free gym in his garage for anyone to either work out or hang out.

– Writer Jamie Wall on the Radio New Zealand website, 16 July 2024