Pukana presenters showcase local talent

When the new season of Pukana hits the screens this week it will feature two presenters from this area.

Herea Te Hura Winitana Ngati Tuwharetoa/Tuhoe and Tiare Tawera, Te Whanau-a-Apanui/Ngati Porou/Tuhoe, will join Krystal-Lee Brown to present the 15th season of the award winning children's television show.

Pukana is a dynamic, colourful, hip and funny mix of up-to-the-minute music, cheeky send-ups, challenges, giveaways and Te Reo Maori practice. It screens on Maori Television on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 4.30pm and on the Te Reo channel at 5pm on the same days from March 4. It then plays the following weekend on Four on Saturdays and Sundays at 3.30pm, with English subtitles.

Herea Te Hura Winitana (Ngati Tuwharetoa, Tuhoe), 21, is going into his third season of Pukana and looking forward to bringing more of the traditional Maori culture he learned as a child to the show.

He won the Manu Korero national Maori speech competition in 2010, and was spotted by then-producer of Pukana, Pania Papa, who encouraged him to audition for the show.

Working at Pukana has been a major learning curve for Herea, as when he started he had never used a computer and needed to work hard to improve his ability to communicate in writing, in Maori and English, since his education had mostly been in the oral tradition of his ancestors.

Tiare Tawera (Te Whanau-a-Apanui, Ngati Porou, Tuhoe) joined Pukana in 2006, making this his eighth year with the show. He says his motivation is to make children smile and to promote Te Reo Maori in an exciting and fun way. He writes the scripts for the drama and humour segments, as well as song parodies and for the past four years has been directing a segment.

Tiare grew up in Whakatane, attended kohanga reo there and Te Wharekura o Ruatoki, then, when his family moved to Auckland he went to Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Piripono and Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Mangere, followed by Papatoetoe Intermediate and then Hato Petera College in Northcote.

At Hato Petera he was head boy and dux, and as well as representing the school in many sports, he participated in Nga Manu Korero, Maori speech competition, where he won Auckland and was runner-up nationally. Through that, he was offered work voicing animated TV shows in Te Reo at Kiwa Media's re-versioning unit.

Pukana won the award for Best Maori Language Programme at the NZ Screen Awards in 2005.

It won the Qantas Media Award in 2003 and the TV Guide New Zealand Television Awards best children's programme award in 1999.