the remarkable life of Dr Timoti

At 17, Timoti Te Moke stared through prison cell bars and thought this would be his life forever.

He’d dropped out of school three years earlier, ended up in a gang, been arrested dozens of times, and suffered beatings which left him feeling dead inside.

All he knew was violence and hopelessness.

“I remember looking up at the window through the bars and having this realisation: the next time I’m back in prison, I’m never leaving,” he says.

“There wasn’t any kind of emotion to it, or sadness or despair, it was just a realisation.”

Then, from nowhere, another thought appeared.

“It was just, ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be that way’. I didn’t know where that came from and I didn’t know what it meant.”

Understanding that would take Te Moke a long time.

Forty years later, at 56, he will celebrate graduating as a doctor of medicine and surgery from Otago University next week.

Soon after he’ll start as a house officer at Middlemore Hospital.

Throughout his life, Te Moke has encountered punishing adversity, endured racism and willed himself to push through when others would have wilted.

But this is not a story about someone miraculously turning their life around, or a switch being flicked and everything changing.

And nor does Te Moke want to be seen as someone who proves anything is possible, or any other trite-sounding cliche.

Quite the opposite.

“I am the quantifiable product of what’s lost in this country,” he says. “I am the manifestation of it.”

He’s talking about the lines of Māori lost to the criminal justice system; the disproportionate toll upon Māori from health conditions; and the disappearance of many young Māori in the education system.

From those ranks, he says, are the doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and leaders the country is missing out on.

It’s something he’s thought about deeply.

Te Moke has been working with lawyer Roimata Smail on a Waitangi Tribunal claim alleging police bias against Māori.

“If we can create tools to stop systemic bias, we can help Māori flourish – and if we can help Māori flourish, we can help this country flourish.”

Tears frequently well in his eyes as he talks about this.

It’s a calling for him – to fight this, an injustice he says he has faced himself many times.

A life of violence

Te Moke (previously known as Morrison) was born in the eastern Bay of Plenty and initially raised by his grandparents Nikora Karora (Ngāti Rangitihi) and Makareti Karora (nee Dinsdale, Tapuika).

They spoke reo Māori at home and encouraged their moko to read and learn.

They were living in central Auckland by the time Te Moke started school, and he thrived – even going into an advanced learners class.

“I think my grandparents have a lot to do with who I am,” he says.

He was happy. But when he was eight, everything changed.

His mother and step-father took custody of him, and they moved to Māngere.

“Life wasn’t good,” he says. “He used to beat the f..k out of me. He’d just leave me a bloody mess on the floor – sometimes three times a week. Who does that to a kid?

“By the time I turned 14, I was broken, and there was no coming back.”

Te Moke started hanging out with other kids from his neighbourhood, many of whom were experiencing similar home lives.

“We just gravitated together, sniffing petrol and glue and getting into trouble.”

He was arrested with another boy when they were about to break into a house, and sent to the Ōwairaka Boys’ Home, a notorious state care facility.

One of his teachers, who could see promise in him, offered for her family to take him into foster care.

“I went to live with them and they loved me dearly, but it didn’t matter how much effort they put into me, it was too late.”

He left his foster home, went back to the violence of home and the trouble on the streets: “Burglaries, violence, I was always carrying weapons … I was just so angry.”

Te Moke was recruited into a gang, almost by accident.

There were constant police encounters and he did three custodial sentences – one for carrying an offensive weapon and one for fighting in a public place.

Another was for discharging a restricted weapon: “I threw a petrol bomb at a bus.”

He was in a cell at Waikeria Youth Prison when he looked through the bars and saw the future.

The blue of the sky had caught his eye and the thought that things did not necessarily have to be this way entered his mind.

“I was still hanging out with the bros, but slowly but surely I started thinking, ‘This is not my life’.”

Leaving the gang was not easy, and neither was trying to go straight.

In his early 20s he moved to Australia, partly to get a clean break. And, eventually, he was able to find stability, including work and having a son.

After about 15 years, he returned to New Zealand. He wanted work that would challenge him, have him interacting with people and give him some autonomy – he chose to become a paramedic.

Having dropped out of school, he knew it was going to be a big commitment to qualify, but he was determined.

“I either needed to go study, or be happy with working in a factory or digging trenches for the rest of my life, and I just wasn’t willing to accept that.”

Te Moke was accepted into AUT and was heading towards his goal, when his world crashed down around him again, in 2012.

Claims and accusations

It was his final year and he was working part-time on the weekends at a night shelter. One night, he heard the sound of smashing glass outside.

A man – who had been drinking all day and earlier been involved in an altercation at a liquor store – had kicked in a door and stumbled across the road.

Te Moke went to ask him what was going on. The man started swearing at Te Moke, who later told police: “Then he just steps in and I think he’s going to hit me so … my instinct is to push him away [and] I catch him on the side of his face and he falls down, hits his head on the ground.”

Te Moke called an ambulance and helped stabilise the man. He went to hospital, but died.

It was a tragic situation but Te Moke was adamant – he was acting in self-defence and never wanted to hurt the man.

A month later, he was charged with manslaughter. When the case finally went to trial, it was over quickly, and Te Moke was found not guilty.

However, he had been ostracised, had his studies delayed and couldn’t work until he was cleared.

He believed it should never have gone to court and the fact he was Māori had a significant bearing on his being charged.

Police have previously denied this.

It was later revealed officers made the decision to charge him without consulting the Crown Solicitor.

It was this ordeal which prompted Te Moke to lodge a Tribunal claim. He believed police bias was going to keep impacting him and others unless something was done.

“I was sitting in my car afterwards thinking, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter how old I get …’. And the thing is, I’m not special – this is happening to everyone. It needs to stop now.”

His claim is now part of the Tribunal’s justice kaupapa inquiry and is expected to be heard next year.

Making a difference

In the meantime, Te Moke had qualified as an advanced paramedic, a job he loved.

However, one day he was sent to a call where an elderly woman was struggling to breathe. She collapsed in front of him and while Te Moke did everything he could, she died.

“I left that job feeling like I kind of ripped her off,” he says. With more training and more knowledge, he wondered, could he have saved her life?

“So the next day I applied for medicine.”

Again, he faced many hurdles – he was twice rejected by Auckland before being accepted by Otago.

And then he had the challenges of being a mature student, not used to such intense academic work.

Compared to the young students he was surrounded by, he struggled.

“They had all their study habits down and I didn’t – I was playing catch-up football all the time.

“It was like learning a new language and then having to recite it in this language for the exams and that was tough.”

But he says the university staff were supportive.

“They helped me immensely, especially the tutors,” he says. “They would bend over backwards to explain things to me.”

Being a mature student, however, did give him some advantages over his younger fellow students. 

When his studies advanced to the stage of doing hospital placements and dealing with patients, he had life experience. 

“That was my jam.”

In his fifth year, he won the Hauora Māori Prize for top marks for a Māori student.

Having now finished his studies he is about to start at Middlemore as a house officer. 

After completing two years, he’ll be eligible to apply for specialised training. At this stage, he thinks he’d like to move into intensive care.

To some, there might be tinges of regret – what if life had been different and he’d qualified much younger?

But Te Moke doesn’t see it like that.

“If it was earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to interact with the community the way I can now, I wouldn’t have the thinking I have now, I wouldn’t have the persistence.

“Yeah, I would have liked to have had the opportunity, but we would be talking about a whole different person.”