Te Rangi Rakuraku was born in Whakatane and was educated at Ōpōtiki College and Waikato University. He graduated with a Dip.Tchg from Christchurch Teachers’ College. He became a licensed Māori interpreter in 1987 and was awarded a Certificate of Māori Studies, Tohu Maatauranga Te Atakura. Rakuiraku has been a councillor for the Historical Review of the Whakatane and Districts Historical Society, and has been a Lecturer in Māori Studies in the Māori Department at the University of Canterbury. He is a former chairperson of Nga Pu Kōrero and Kaumatua of the Social Work Studies Department of Canterbury University.
Biographical sources
- New Zealand Who’s Who Aotearoa. Ed. Alister Taylor. Vol. One. Auckland, N.Z.: New Zealand Who’s Who Aotearoa Limited, 1992:237.
Non-fiction
- "The Mission School, Tanatana, Waimana, 1922-1959." Historical Review: Journal of the Whakatane and District Historical Society 26.2 (Nov. 1978): 99+.
- Rakuraku provides a history of the mission school at Tanatana which was established in 1922 when local Māori elders asked the Presbyterian Church to provide a mission school based on the existing school at Matahi Pa.
- "The Te Teko Māori Mission: 1926-1980." Historical Review: Journal of the Whakatane and District Historical Society 28.2 (Nov. 1980): 123-124.
- A history of the Māori Mission in Te Teko which was established in 1926 when Sister Tiaki and her assistant, Miss Clone, left the Presbyterian mission in Waiohau to start a mission in Te Teko. Rakuraku traces the changing leadership of the mission up to the time of writing this article and notes that Sister Tiaki, Miss Tweed and Rev. Kihoro Te Puawhe were pivotal figures in the ministry in Te Teko.