Te Aomuhurangi Temamaka (Maaka) Jones

Maaka was born at Whitianga and was the daughter of the head of the Ringatu Church, Paora Kingi Delamere, and Hannah Travan née Te Au. She was educated at Omaio School and Turakina Māori Girls’ College where she was junior dux of the school. She trained as a nurse at the Cook Hospital in Gisborne and subsequently married Pax Jones and had nine children. Maaka began teaching part-time in 1958 at Gisborne Boys’ High School and Gisborne Girls’ High School. In the late 1960s she became an itinerant teacher of Māori, Social Studies, English and Art at other schools in Gisborne including Lytton High School and Waikohu College. In 1974 she spent a year at Christchurch Teachers’ College and obtained a Māori language teaching certificate. Maaka completed papers towards a B.A. in Māori at the University of Canterbury and Sociology at Victoria University. She was an itinerant Māori teacher in Christchurch and was instrumental in introducing te reo Māori into a number of Christchurch secondary schools. In 1979 Maaka moved to Wellington and worked as a Māori language teacher at the Correspondence School, teaching Māori at all levels, and also taught Māori language to several Ministers of the Crown. She was founder of the New Zealand Māori Language Teachers’ Association and was a founding member of the New Zealand Māori Language Board Nga Kaiwhakapumau I te Reo.

Maaka wrote over 60 waiata, and a number of short stories and poetry in Māori and translated some of them into English. Her work has been published in Koru, Te Ao Hou, Te Kaea, Into the World of Light and Te Ao Mārama, and has been broadcast by Radio New Zealand, and produced on record. Her waiata have been performed by culture groups such as Te Wahi-Pounamu, Tairawhiti, and Te Whanau-A-Apanui Cultural Group which gained third place in the Aotearoa Festival in Whangarei in 1988. Other waiata have won first place in competitions at Gisborne, Hamilton, Ngaruawahia, Rotorua, Christchurch, and Blenheim.

Maaka and her father, Paora Delamere, wrote the first published text of the Ringatu faith, Te Pukapuka o Nga Kawenata e Waru a Te Atua me Nga Karakia Katoa a Te Haahi Ringatu (The Book of the Eight Covenants of God and all the Prayers of the Ringatu Church) in 1968. Maaka and Ngoi Pewhairangi were made ministers of the Ringatu Church in the late 1960s and Maaka worked for the Ringatu Church all her life. She began writing a biography of her father; a short biography of her father was published in the third volume of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. She was a member of Māori Women’s Welfare League, was a founding member of Kaiwhaka Pumau i Te Reo and was one of the founding members and an announcer of the Māori radio station formerly called Te Reo o Poneke radio in 1980-81, which later became Upoko Te Ika Radio. She was on the Board of Governors of the Wellington Polytechnic, was an early member of the Waihirere Māori Club during the late 1950s and was Kuia of the Victoria University Marae. She was a member of the NZ Literary Fund Board from 1990 and was a member of the QEII Arts Council and the NZ Māori Arts Board. She represented New Zealand at the World Assembly of Churches in 1991. Maaka received the QSM in 1993 for services to the community and education, to Māori Radio and to the retention of the Māori language. She received the New Zealand 1990 Medal and was appointed a JP in 1986. Maaka was the founder of the co-ed Kapahaka of Gisborne High School which is currently known as Turanga Wahine Turanga Tane.

Biographical sources

• Phone conversation and correspondence from Con Te Rata Jones, 13 Sept. 1998, and 17 June 2004.
• Into the World of Light: An Anthology of Māori Writing. Eds. Witi Ihimaera and D. S. Long. Auckland, N.Z.: Heinemann, 1982. 59
• Ngā Mōrehu/The Survivors. Eds. Judith Binney and Gillian Chaplain. Auckland, N.Z.: Oxford UP, 1986. 73.
• New Zealand Who’s Who Aotearoa 1998 Edition. Auckland, N.Z.: New Zealand Who’s Who Publications Limited, 1998. 833.