Debbie Tepora Panuku Kupenga

Debbie Kupenga was born at Waipiro Bay and educated at Hiruharama Primary School and at Ngata Memorial College. She writes educational material, fiction, non-fiction, children’s educational reading material, women’s educational material, historical, haka taparahi, and film reviews both in English and Māori. She teaches at Waikato University. She has composed Māori songs in moteatea form and to classical music. She composed a moteatea performed with a poi for Manutahi Primary School in 1987. She composed a Māori opera song for the Taradale Primary School in Hawkes Bay to be performed at a festival in the early 1980s. She did the research on the consumption of and the effects of alcohol among Māori aged between 15-45 years in a suburb of Auckland with a high population of Māori. "Along with others we reported the findings in a special publication for the Medical School of the University of Auckland. The effect of that report was that a Māori person was employed to work on the Alcohol Advisory Council of the Medical School of Auckland University, educational advertisements were promoted on television, road blitz were heightened by the traffic department etc.... Further I wrote some articles for a Māori women’s magazine that used to be published quarterly in the early to mid 1980s by the Māori Women’s Movement, of Otara... In the early to mid 1980s I was very active in Māori people’s health and social issues and presented many papers on various issues to do with health, alternative spirituality; and physical healing and such. I alerted Robert Pouwhare as to the various health problems that Māori people had the highest rate of and he produced a number of educational television programmes to promote the nation’s awareness of such. I have written papers on various issues from health to politics, to history, to education, to Māori ideology and philosophy and [have] given public forums for specific hui, at marae, at Auckland University and to Secondary School Māori teachers - [these papers were not published]". She has also written under a pseudonym at times. "More recently I collated most of the music, karakia and karanga for Witi Ihimaera’s play ‘The Two Taniwha’ which we performed at Ruatoria and Gisborne on the 2nd and 5th of January 1993. I have written books for both Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Māori. These are as yet unpublished because I have not found a publisher who would allow me to illustrate my work, or allow me to publish my work without an English translation."

Biographical sources

• Correspondence and phone conversation with Debbie Kupenga on 17 Feb. 1993 and Sept. 1998.