She was, without a doubt, one of the greatest Māori leaders of the past two generations. Much has been said about her this week. She is now immortalised particularly for her incrediblework in Te Kōhanga Reo, as the face, catalyst, leader and queen of the movement and we will forever be grateful for her amazing mahi.
She was a warrior queen, especially when there was controversy about kōhanga spending in 2015.
She decided to do one major interview and that interview was with me at her beloved Kōhanga Reo Trust. I told her it would be a “no holds barred” style interview and her response was to bring it on.
When I told her in the interview that she was now 86 and surely it was time to go and John Tamihere had said she should have retired 10 or 15 years earlier, she responded that “JT and [I] could go and take a jump”!
When I told her I had never heard of Māori or anyone being a lifetime board member, she said, “That’s because you don’t know your Māori world.”
On Saturday, February 1, 2025, surrounded by whānau at home, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi died peacefully aged 95 years.
She was brilliant and handled the interview like the consummate professional she was. Not bad for an 86-year-old.
Of course, the kōhanga was cleared and the kuia stayed the leader and in her last years was close to the leadership till the day she died at age 95.
Iritana touched so many people’s lives and was actually a close friend to my wife Tania well before me. Tania told me that when they were setting up kōhanga in Titahi Bay in the early 80s, Iritana was tough to deal with.
She was brilliant on the whiteboard, Tania said, and the whānau ended up calling her the “whiteboard witch” – not a name she would have exactly embraced at the time!
One day when she came out to deliver a strategy that was not going to benefit the kōhanga very much, Tania and the whānau hid the whiteboard, which broke her rhythm, and the whānau ended up getting a much better deal than Iritana had initially planned.
She laughed about it in later years and laughed even more about her nickname “whiteboard witch”. No one came close to converting a crowd when she used a whiteboard.
This kuia was so gifted. When we held major Whānau Ora hui, we used her a couple of times as a motivational speaker and I have never seen a speaker move an audience like she did.
It was something to behold. She was just sensational and she was well into her 80s when she was doing this. She had such a fabulous sense of humour and was one of my biggest supporters when I got back into Parliament in 2017.
She used to call me once a week at 5.30am to give me riding instructions for the political week. She’d say things like, “Now boy, I love your fire but now can you just pull it back a bit!”.
She was so neat, and 10 years ago when I found out we were born on the same date, March 21, I told her I would send her a text wishing her happy birthday for the rest of her life. So on every birthday, I would text, “Happy birthday you old bag”.
Dame Iritana Te Rangi Tāwhiwhirangi. Photo / Te Tai
Her response would always be, “Turituri [hush] boy, you cheeky bugger!”. And then she would proceed to give me instructions about what I should be doing to ensure there was more kotahitanga [unity] in Te Ao Māori.
Iritana would take every opportunity to lead and instruct people when she thought they needed guidance.
Winston Peters told me he travelled in a car from Palmerston North to Wellington and she never gave him a moment to talk. He respected her too.
I’m so sad that she has gone. She really only started getting old about two or three years ago, that’s when I noticed a decline.
One last memory that stood out for me was when she came and had dinner with me at Bellamy’s about three years ago. We were laughing away about politics, and I told her how disgraceful it was that she had joined the Act Party when it was first set up.
She of course told me to shut up – and then who should walk into the restaurant, but none other than Roger Douglas.
The kuia then asked me if she could go and talk to him and his Act mates, gate-crashed their table and lectured them for the next hour.
It was wonderful. I think she drove them crazy; a night I will always remember.
Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi was a special leader who could engage with anyone across all party lines. She was one of our greatest leaders and I was so proud to have been one of the many who were close to her.
