Hinewirangi (Rosemary) Kohu-Morgan

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.