DIRECTIONS 41 - BILL MAUNG

Bill Maung is probably best known as a political advisor, spokesperson advocate for Black Power. As a community worker he has considerable experience working with Māori gangs and has had a lot to do with Māori efforts by Black Power to shed their negative gang image and become a movement attracting young people at risk and offering them security and
training for employment. Bill Maung is an activist in the sense of being continually active in seeking what he sees as injustice. Bill Maung is not a Māori. He was born in Burma and came to New Zealand 25 yrs ago. He was prominent in the political movement that won independence for Burma after WWII and held posts such as Secretary of Industry and
Secretary for Labour in the Burmese Government. He was ousted in a military coup that brought the present government to power. But above all Bill Maung is a Buddhist with its emphasis on religion not so much as a theology or a belief system but as a way of life, of living and learning.