The Tuwhare Trust is excited to announce that we are the recipients of Matatuhi Foundation funding to support the literary legacy of Hone Tuwhare. This funding will allow the Trust to extend our reach across the literary landscape both locally and nationally to showcase and celebrate the enduring legacy of Hone Tuwhare. Our sincere thanks to the Matatuhi Foundation for their generous support. We will provide more updates on our Hone Tuwhare Legacy Project in the coming weeks and months. Link here for more information about the Matatuhi Foundation.
The Tuwhare Trust has had the privilege of having Vice-Regal Patronage since the Trust was first established in 2010. We are one of a small number of organisations that have this honour and we hold this with much respect and humility. We are particularly proud of having the current Governor General, Dame Cindy Kiro (Ngapuhi, Ngati Hine, Ngati Kahu) as our current Patron. Dame Cindy Kiro began her five-year term as Governor General of New Zealand on 21 October 2021, auspiciously on Hone Tuwhare’s 99th birthday!
You can read more about Dame Cindy Kiro and our previous Patrons here.
Here’s a Tuwhare poem for a Dame.
Rain-maker’s song for Whina
I’ll not forget your joints creaking as you climbed into the bus at Victoria Park to bless the journey. When you broke down in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, I thought that what you left unsaid hung more tangibly uncertain above us all than some intangible certainty that we would all get a comfortable berth in the hereafter.
Saint Christopher in the rain at night, just before Mangamuka Gorge. People wearing Saint Christopher badges getting off the bus and helping to put an overturned vehicle right side up. No one hurt. I finger the cheap badge you gave me of the saint. Will it be, alright ?
A couple of days later in bright sunshine, we hit the road leaving Te Hapua behind. And all the way south – to the ‘head of the fish,’ I picked up some hard truths embedded in your hilarious speeches on the maraes:
No more lollies !We been sucking the pakeha lolly for one hundred and fifty years. Look at what’s happened. Look at what we got left. Only two million acres. Yes, that’s right. Two million acres out of sixty six million acres.
Think of that. Good gracious, if we let them take what is left we will all become taurekareka. Do we want that ?
So you listen, now. This is a Sacred March. We are marching because we want to hold on to what is left. You must understand this. And you must think of your Tupunas. They are marching beside you. Move over, and make room. We are not going to Wellington for nothing. And don’t be mistaken: Kare tenei hikoi oku, he hikoi noa – aha ranei – ki te miri-miri i nga paoro o Te Roringi.
E, kui ! What a way to bring the ‘House’ down. You could not have lobbed a sweeter grenade. I’m all eared-in to you baby .… Kia ora tonu koe.
The Tuwhare Trust opened the crib to the Kaka Point Community this last weekend as a fundraiser for the local Romahapa School. We welcomed manuhiri throughout the day who came to have a look through the fully restored Tuwhare crib, learn about our restoration journey and hang out with us on the back lawn, eat, drink and share stories about Hone Tuwhare and his life in Kaka Point. A beautiful kaupapa on a stunning Kaka Point day and an early hari huri tau for Hone on his 102nd birthday today, October 21. Arohanui.
The Hone Tuwhare Trust has been deeply saddened by the passing of Selwyn Muru and offer our love to the whanau and these words of love to our friend.
Selwyn had an enormous empathy for people of all walks of life and in all human situations. Joy and anguish, love and hate, tears and laughter. He had a personality without reserve and led a life sampled in all its paradoxes. In a 1984 interview with Katerina Mataira, Selwyn expressed that “art should cover the whole spectrum of human experience. It should reflect at one extreme the pain and anguish of people and pursue every mood they feel right through to their capacity for fun and frivolity”. He was an artist in all ways, his resonant voice was tuned to waiata, whaikorero and dramatic performance. Musical instruments were explored with comfortable abandon, and he composed songs, plays and poetry. But it was his creative talent in the visual arts where he made his strongest statements about life. Hone Tuwhare and Selwyn Muru were contemporaries, mates, northern relations, hoa aroha. One of Selwyn’s well known and loved works is his waharoa in Aotea Square in Tamaki Makaurau, which features one of Hone’s well known and loved Haiku poems. Tuwhare’s Haiku was both a tribute to his friend Selwyn and a reference to the Horotiu awa that once ran through the middle of the city.
Travel well e Murupaenga. Your work provoked tears and laughter, you are a continuing source of inspiration and your contribution to the world is a taonga for us all. Laugh again e hoa. Arohanui, The Hone Tuwhare Trust.
