Hinewirangi (Rosemary) Kohu-Morgan

Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Kahu

1947 -



Hinewirangi was born in Gisborne and was raised in Nuhaka. She came from a large family of 12 and states "there were heaps of whangai kids - 20 in our family...Mother was always birthing... I was a silent child – [my diary writing goes] back to I knew I would have to write it, the deep feelings - I always felt the silent one. I was a Mormon - raised totally Mormon and went to a Mormon Church College." She was educated at Bethlehem Native School and Church College of New Zealand in Hamilton. She studied Psychology, Māori and English Literature at the University of Waikato and has worked as a counsellor in sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence in Hamilton. In 1984 she started the Māori Women’s Centre. After studying Psychology at university, she decided it did not service the Māori people and that it was all geared to overseas people. She decided she was going to introduce research into Māori women and their needs. She ceased studying at university and began to write all the training programmes for the Centre. Hinewirangi has written children’s books and has written and directed plays for the Centre. She has written six videos for children. She holds a lot of mask workshops and Māori plays. She is actively writing and has a children’s book just about to be published by Moana Press. She is writing a Māori waiata. She prefers to perform her poetry live, as she maintains that poetry should be a live expression. "It is a life force which begins to rumble down from my feet - it comes from the deeper part of myself." Hinewirangi is also writing a novel about dying; she states "I died as a child at five years of age and became an adult before my time." "Her aim as a Māori writer and poet is to write in the language and images of her people, but employing also traditional images, to portray the political and social climate of today." She teaches at Polytech and at University and also internationally. She is a Board Member of the International Indian Treaty Council. She is a steering committee member representing Region 3 - Australia and Aotearoa in Nuclear Free Independent Pacific [NFIP]. She also developes women’s programmes for Asian Cultural Foreign on Development (ACFOD) based in Thailand. She travels a lot and in 1992 went to Canada to the Healing the Spirits World Wide Conference. She read her work at the Writers’ Week in Dunedin in 1993. Hinewirangi has attended Nga Puna Waihanga Hui and has been publishing from She writes poetry, short stories, novels, plays, waiata, non-fiction articles, children’s writing and is a scriptwriter and director.

Biographical sources

  • Interview and correspondence with Hinewirangi in August 1992 and 28 Jan. 1998.

    Films/Video

  • "Why Did He Touch Me Nanny." Te Kakano O Te Whanau, Moko Productions.
  • Written and produced by Hinewirangi. No further details.
  • "It’s Really Yukky." Te Kakano O Te Whanau, Moko Productions. Written and produced by Hinewirangi. No further details.
  • "I Didn’t Know It Was Wrong." Te Kakano O Te Whanau, Moko Productions. Written and produced by Hinewirangi. No further details.
  • "But He’s Allowed." No details.
  • "I’m Too Scared To Say." No details.
  • "Taniwha Rau." No details.
  • Other

  • Methods and Theories of Counselling.
  • The Value of Role Play in Counselling.
  • Child Healing. A creative healing process for trainers working in the area of healing children.
  • Creative Healing.
  • Parenting/Whanautanga.
  • Nga Ahua Wahine.
  • Te Ao Mo Nga Wahine.
  • Te Aho Tapu.
  • Te Taonga-Mai-Tawhiti. Dr Paparangi Reid and Robert Pouwhare.
  • Poetry

  • "Ranginui’s Spirit." Nga Tuhituhinga A Te Rangatahi O Tauranga Mo Nga Ahuatanga O Te Ratou Noho I Te Marae O Huria I Te Whare Tipuna I A Tamateapokaiwhenua: A Collection Of Writings, Expressing Their Thoughts On A Seminar Held At Judea Marae In The Ancestral House, Tamateapokaiwhenua. By young people of Tauranga. Comp. and ed. Miria Simpson/ a te rangatahi o Tauranga. Hamilton, N.Z.: M. Simpson, 1982. 19-20.
  • "Sacrifice." Broken Chant. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1983. 48. Rpt. in White Feathers: An Anthology of New Zealand and Pacific Island Poetry on the Theme of Peace. Ed. Terry Locke, Peter Low and John Winslade. Christchurch, N.Z.: Hazard, 1991. 145.
  • Written in collaboration with Robert de Roo.
  • Broken Chant. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1983. 2nd ed. Mar. 1984. 3rd ed. Oct. 1984. ]
  • In collaboration with Robert de Roo.
  • "White Sands." The Turning Face: Twelve Writers from Tauranga Moana. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, [1985]. 7.
  • The speaker reflects on her vision of being alone on the beach and her need to healed by the sea.
  • "Our Own." The Turning Face: Twelve Writers from Tauranga Moana. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1985. 9.
  • Drawing on the imagery of sewing, the poet writes of the devastating effect of colonisation on the Māori.
  • "Tangi." The Turning Face: Twelve Writers from Tauranga Moana. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1985. 10.
  • The speaker mourns the death of a people through imperialism. Through her own tears, she sees the birth of a strong people birthed in pain.
  • "Child Growth." Screaming Moko. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1986. 12. Rpt. in Pacific Voices: An Anthology of Māori and Pacific Writing. Comp. Bernard Gadd. Auckland, N.Z.: Macmillan, 1989: 15.
  • The speaker, Tamanui te Ra, speaks to the young Māori child and encourages it to grow secure in its Māori identity.
  • "Fried Bread." Screaming Moko. Tauranga: Tauranga Moana, 1986. Rpt. in Pacific Voices: An Anthology of Māori and Pacific Writing. Comp. Bernard Gadd. Auckland, N.Z.: Macmillan Company, 1989: 43. Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 53.
  • A poem articulating the struggle for a positive self identity when young Māori grow up surrounded by the dominant Pakeha culture. This is a poignant cry of a young Māori woman ashamed at school because of her ‘fried bread sandwiches/which harden with golden syrup’. She desperately wants to blend in with the white majority and be ‘the best/brown skinned, black haired/ brown eyed Pakeha there is!’
  • "Sleep." Screaming Moko. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1986. Rpt. in Pacific Voices: An Anthology of Māori and Pacific Writing. Comp. Bernard Gadd. Auckland, N.Z.: Macmillan, 1989: 104.
  • The speaker, in pain, finds solace, comfort and understanding in Papatuanuku and the other Māori goddesses/tipuna.
  • "Earth Mother." Screaming Moko. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1986. 33-34. Rpt. in White Feathers: An Anthology of New Zealand and Pacific Island Poetry on the Theme of Peace. Ed. Terry Locke, Peter Low and John Winslade. Christchurch, N.Z.: Hazard, 1991. 58. Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 52.
  • The Earth Mother speaks forth in this poem and denounces the violence acted out on the New Zealand landscape through greed, industrialisation, land abuses and confiscations, and pollution.
  • "Expectations." Screaming Moko. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1986. 55. Rpt. in White Feathers: An Anthology of New Zealand and Pacific Island Poetry on the Theme of Peace. Eds. Terry Locke, Peter Low and John Winslade. Christchurch, N.Z.: Hazard, 1991. 146. Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 55-56.
  • The poet reminds Māori women who are expecting Māori men ‘to get their act together’ that their models in Māori tradition are fighting men and that it is the women who have ‘nurturing, loving models’.
  • Screaming Moko. Tauranga, N.Z.: Tauranga Moana, 1986.
  • "Woman." Te Ara Hou: The New Path: An Approach to Teaching English which Draws on Māori Tradition. Christchurch, N.Z.: The Christchurch College of Education, 1990. 87.
  • Co-authors Jenny Lee, Ngaire Pohatu, Kathleen Quinlivan, Pauline Scanlan, and Ra Smith.
  • Kanohi ki te kanohi. Plimmerton, N.Z.: Moana, 1990.
  • A poetry collection composed of four parts: ‘The Great Turtle’, ‘Hawaii noa’, ‘Aotearoa’ and ‘Asia’.
  • "Papatuanuku." ibid. 8. Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 53-54.
  • The poet berates the Pakeha colonisers who cleared the land, introduced noxious plants, and permeated Aotearoa with foreign concepts of materialism, racism and colonialism. The poet concludes that Māori are working hard to cover a stripped Papatuanuku, regenerate the land and disengage from the shackles of introduced greed.
  • "I Am Māori." Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 51-52.
  • In this assertion of Māori identity, the speaker pushes beyond those aspects that would make others define her as Māori: brown skin, ‘curly, black hair’, Māori language and so on. Her Māoriness, instead, emerges ‘deep inside [her] soul’; it is arising and is connected to ‘an ancient past’.
  • "Intrusion." Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 54-55.
  • The poet criticises the ugly pervasive constructions and pollutions built alongside wahi tapu at Waihi and at Tuakau. The speaker then ponders on the myth of ‘equal status’ between Pakeha and Māori.
  • "Barriers." Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 3: Te Puāwaitanga O Te Kōrero: The Flowering. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1993. 56.
  • A poem encapsulating the issues that separate even at a linguistic level.
  • "He Tohu Rangātira." Homeland. Mānoa 9.1. Ed. Frank Stewart. Feature Editors Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawai’i P, 1997. 94-95.
  • "Sisters." Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. Ed. Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan. Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland UP, 2003. 108-110.
  • "Wise One, Old One." Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. Ed. Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan. Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland UP, 2003. 110-112.

    Other

  • Erai, Michelle, Fuli, Everdina, Irwin, Kathie and Wilcox, Lenaire. Māori Women: An Annotated Bibliography. [Wellington, N.Z.]: Michelle Erai, Everdina Fuli, Kathie Irwin and Lenaire Wilcox, 1991. 12.
  • Reviews

  • Simpson, Peter. "In Love with Words." Evening Post 3 May 1991: 7.
  • Ensing, Riemke. "Books." Listener 1 July 1991: 50-52.
  • Broken Chant
  • Long, D. S. Tu Tangata 19 (1984): 36-7.
  • He writes of this collection: ‘James K Baxter spoke of "five water-worn stones... five spiritual aspects of Māori... life": arohanui, manuhiritanga, kōrero, matewa and mahi. This hard-won first book of poems by two Tauranga poets, privately published, takes up these five stones and chisels with them an often anguished but finally rangimarie record of two ara’.
  • Screaming Moko
  • Edmond, Murray. Landfall 41.3 (1987): 338-344.