Reweti Tuhorouta Mokena Kohere

Reweti Kohere was born at Orutua near the East Cape, the eldest son of Hone Hiki Kohere and Henarata Pereto, and grandson of the Hon. Mokena Kohere, one of the first Māori appointed to the Legislative Council. He was educated at Waiomatatini Native School, and Gisborne Central School for a year and a half. In 1885 he was accepted as a student at Te Aute College. Within five years he passed the matriculation and was dux of the college in his final year. He was appointed to the Te Aute College staff in 1891 and then went on to study at the Canterbury University College in Christchurch and passed all his B.A. papers except for one difficult Mathematics paper. Later he was appointed assistant tutor at Te Rau Theological College in Gisborne, during which time he gained a L.Th degree in 1911. Kohere became the editor of Te Pipiwharauroa, a Māori language paper established by Rev. F. A. Bennett, which was published at Te Rau College; he held the position of editor until 1908 when he moved to Te Araroa to take charge of the Kawakawa pastorate. In 1904 he married Keita Kaikiri Paratene and taught in several schools including Te Aute. After working in the Te Kawakawa pastorate for thirteen years, he retired and went into farming on family land at Rangiata station on the East Cape. For thirty years he was a member of the Matakaoa County Council.

Kohere was a prolific writer and contributed articles to Te Kopara and Te Toa Takitini. He wrote articles for some 50 years for the Poverty Bay Herald and Te Ao Hou in both Māori and English. He was also an active correspondent with the Gisborne Herald. In the early issues of Te Ao Hou, Kohere published a number of articles on traditional Māori poetry and was the author of several books including his own autobiography. He wrote the manuscript of a book entitled “Thornton of Te Aute,” which was lost and never published. Only two manuscripts were completed before his death: one was a collection of his writings in Te Pipiwharauroa, and the other which was entitled The Māori as Marsden Knew Him which contained quotations from Elder’s The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden. He was the last survivor of the original members of the Young Māori Party. In the search for a candidate for the Māori Bishop, Kohere was theunanimous choice of the Auckland Diocesan Māori clergy, but he declined the nomination. He held a first-grade interpreter’s licence. Rarawa Kohere writes of Kohere: “Perceiving the importance of language to the survival of Māori culture, Reweti compiled a collection of the best of his own and other contributions to Māori newspapers. (These were published in 1995 as Nga Kōrero a Reweti Kohere Mā.) In 1949, with the aid of the New Zealand Literary Fund, he published The Story of a Māori Chief, a biography of Mokena Kohere; and, in 1951, his own story, The Autobiography of a Māori. These books, written in English, were followed by He Konae Aronui, a collection of Māori proverbs. He found it ironic and a source of contention that it was easier to publish in English than in Māori. He continued writing and publishing material such as song-poetry (waiata-moteatea) and accounts of tradition up to the time of his death. He condemned the use of transliteration in place of existing Māori words but, in the interests of good communication, advocated their use when there was no equivalent word in Māori….Special interest was the translation of his favourite verses from English into Māori. He made his own translations of many passages from Shakespeare and other writers, as well as from the Bible.” Rarawa Kohere adds: “My grandfather was a most prolific writer. On average he was contributing about one article per two months for over fifty years.” Many more articles are still to be researched and placed in this bibliography from the Gisborne Herald and other editions of Te Kopara.

Biographical sources

• Correspondence from Rarawa Kohere on 8 June 1998.
• Te Ao Hou 9 (1954): 3.
• The Story of a Māori Chief: Mokena Kohere and His Forebears. Wellington, N.Z.: Reed, 1949. 101-102.
• A. M. I. "Reweti Tuhurouta Kohere." Journal of the Polynesian Society 63 (1954): 258-259.
• Kohere, Rarawa. "Kohere, Reweti Tuhorouta 1871-1954." The Dictionary of the New Zealand Biography. Vol. 3. 1901-1920. Auckland
• Wellington, N.Z.: Auckland UP
• Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1996. 266-268.