Sir Pou Temara

Sir Pou Temara died aged 78. His whānau confirmed his death on the morning of Sunday 8 November 2026, New Zealand time, and it was reported by Te Ao Māori News, the New Zealand Herald and Stuff, which described him as a towering figure in the Māori language revival. The cause of death was not made public. At the time of the first reports, details of his tangihanga and nehu (burial) were still to be confirmed.

William Te Rangiua Temara was born on 21 April 1948 in the Ruatāhuna valley in Te Urewera, the son of George Te Umuariki Temara, a Second World War veteran of the 28th Māori Battalion, and Puti (Nani) Tinimēne. As his mother's first child he was raised, in keeping with Māori practice of the time, by his grandparents Tamahou Tinimēne and Pareraututu.

When he was about ten months old the three of them moved to a small clearing in the Te Urewera forest between Maungapōhatu and Rūātoki. They lived in a dwelling made of forest materials with an earth floor and, in observance of tapu, cooked and ate in a lean-to outside. Te reo Māori was the only language of his early childhood, and his elders, among them Hikawera Te Kurapa, schooled him in traditional knowledge.

At eight he returned with his grandparents to Ruatāhuna, where he attended Huiarau Native School and learned English for the first time. At 15 he boarded at Wesley College in Auckland. He trained as a teacher at the Wellington College of Education and then studied at Victoria University of Wellington, where his master's thesis on the sayings of Te Kooti earned distinction, while working at the Gear Meat Company works in Petone. His uncle Makarini Temara sat on the first Waitangi Tribunal in 1975.

Temara spent more than 43 years teaching te reo Māori and tikanga in New Zealand universities. He taught at Victoria University of Wellington, where he had a long association with Te Herenga Waka marae, and became professor of Māori language and tikanga at the University of Waikato. He later became professor of Māori philosophy at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.

With Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and Dr Te Wharehuia Milroy he founded Te Panekiretanga o te Reo Māori, the Institute of Excellence in the Māori Language, which trained a generation of highly fluent speakers and orators. He also established Te Matapunenga, a group of tohunga dedicated to reviving the practices of the tohunga of old. He presented Kōrero Mai, an early Māori language broadcast series, in the 1980s.

He was appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal in 2008 and served on it for the rest of his life. He chaired the Repatriation Advisory Panel at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, which advises on the return of Māori and Moriori ancestral remains from overseas, sat on the Tūhoe Waikaremoana Māori Trust Board and chaired Te Hui Ahurei a Tūhoe, the Tūhoe cultural festival. He was a member of Tekau-mā-rua, the council of twelve first appointed by Kīngi Tūheitia and continued under Kuini Nga wai hono i te po.

His books in te reo Māori won wide recognition. Te Rautakitahi o Tūhoe ki Ōrākau won the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards' Te Mūrau o te Tuhi Māori language award in 2024, and Te Āhua o Ngā Kupu Whakaari a Te Kooti, an analysis of the prophetic sayings of Te Kooti published by Auckland University Press in 2025, won the same award in May 2026, making him the first person to win it twice.

Temara was a member of Ngāi Tūhoe and remained closely tied to Ruatāhuna and Te Urewera throughout his life. His son Tamahou encouraged him to accept his knighthood in 2021, after he had wrestled with whether a Tūhoe man and servant of the Kīngitanga should take an honour from the Crown. He was often quoted for the saying "kia koi te matapunenga, kia maiangi te matapūihoiho", which he rendered as "see the invisible, feel the intangible, do the impossible".

Temara is remembered as one of the last of a generation of tohunga raised entirely in te reo Māori and traditional knowledge, and as a teacher who demanded excellence from those who spoke the language. Through Te Panekiretanga o te Reo Māori and his decades of university teaching he shaped many of today's leading Māori scholars, broadcasters and leaders. His work on the Waitangi Tribunal, on the repatriation of ancestral remains and in the Kīngitanga, together with his award winning books in te reo Māori, carried mātauranga Māori into public life and into print for future generations.