Obit: Dame Tariana Turia has died

8 April 1944 -3 January 2025

Dame Tariana Turia, a former member of parliament and government minister, has died. She was 80.

The former Labour Party MP and founder and former co-leader of Te Pāti Māori was a champion of Māori aspirations.

She served in Parliament for 18 years, initially as a list MP and then in the Te Tai Hauāuru seat for over a decade.

Always candid in her views, she was regarded by some as a dangerous separatist, while respected by others for her personal integrity and commitment to Māoridom. "Māori people expect you to say what you mean and to certainly say the things that they want you to say, that they consider to be critically important. On the other hand, those types of things then offend middle New Zealand."

Watch:

Dame Tariana speaks to RNZ's Matangireia podcast in 2019

Whānau

Born Tariana Woon in 1944, with affiliations to Ngāti Apa, Nga Rāuru, Whanganui and Ngāti Tūwharetoa, she grew up in Whangaehu, near Whanganui, and was raised by her grandmother and aunts and uncles.

Her father was a United States marine whom she never met.

She married George Turia and the couple had four children, raised another two under the whāngai system, and fostered a number of other children. They have more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

George died in 2019.

Dame Tariana came to national notice as a leader of the 79-day occupation of Whanganui's Moutoa Gardens in 1995 which were carried out to highlight Māori claims along the Whanganui River.

But she already had a long history in the Māori health sector and in iwi development.

She and her husband had set up the first marae-based programme offering youngsters training in literacy and a range of skills including engineering and catering.

Hundreds passed through the programme in its 10-year life span. Her focus was on harnessing Māori potential and she had little patience with those she described as risk-averse public servants.

"We can't go on building prisons, I'm appalled at the amount of money that we're prepared to put into building a prison - $40m-odd, that $40m could change the lives of those kids if it was spent intervening instead of waiting til they've all fallen over."

National politics

Dame Tariana entered Parliament as a Labour Party list MP in 1996.

She won the Te Tai Hauāuru seat for Labour in the 2002 election and became associate minister of Māori affairs, health, housing, and social services. She was also minister of state.

Dame Turia was minister for the community and voluntary sector in 2003/4, a role she reprised under a later agreement with the National Party in 2008.

Although she had hoped to act as a bridge between Māori and Parliament, she found her first three years in the House lonely and isolating. With her strong belief that Māori needed to make decisions for themselves, she was often uncomfortable with party policy. She once remarked she felt like "a duck swimming in the wrong river".

There were several controversies during her time as a Labour MP, including in a speech to psychologists when she referred to New Zealand's colonisation as a holocaust. The remark caused outrage in some quarters and a stern warning from then-prime minister Helen Clark.

Dame Tariana explained in an RNZ interview in 2000 that her intention had been to encourage research into the Māori experience of colonisation so that their psyche could be better understood.

"What has caused our people to change from what it is that we understand our people to have been pre-colonisation, and what has brought them to the situation today where we make up so much of the negative statistics."

Dame Tariana was perhaps most well-known for her split from Labour over the foreshore and seabed legislation in 2004.

She could not reconcile the assertion of Crown ownership with her belief that Māori had never signed away sovereignty in the Treaty of Waitangi and should be able to take the matter to court.

The conflict eventually led to her resigning her seat and leaving the Labour Party. She won the subsequent by-election in Te Tau Hauauru and returned to Parliament representing the newly formed Māori Party, as it was then known.

When the Foreshore and Seabed Bill was pushed through Parliament later that year, she was scathing in her condemnation, calling it a travesty of justice.

"This whole issue about New Zealanders access to the courts of this land, the right to due process, has in fact actually been denied Māori people, the whole process has been one of an utter denial of the rights of our people."

Te Pati Māori gained ground and in the 2005 election took four of the seven Māori seats in Parliament, seats that had traditionally been held by Labour.

Three years later, it won another of the seats and Dame Tariana and co-leader Dr Pita Sharples entered into arrangement with the National Party. They served as ministers outside cabinet.

The decision was not universally popular with Te Pati Māori followers, or even their MPs. Te Pati Māori MP Hone Harawira eventually left the party.

Dame Tariana was the minister for Whānau Ora from 2010 until 2014. Whānau Ora was created under her oversight as a means for the government funding and supporting kaupapa Māori providers to deliver services to Māori in an attempt to address systemic inequalities.

She was also instrumental in establishing New Zealand's Smokefree 2025 goal.

She continued to represent Te Tai Hauāuru for Te Pati Māori until 2014 when she retired from politics.

Her championship of the Māori cause led to death threats and attacks on her house but did not deflect her from calling for self-determination for iwi and an end to what she saw as state-created dependency.

After Parliament

Dame Tariana was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2015 New Year Honours for services as a Member of Parliament.

After leaving Parliament, she was particularly critical of Oranga Tamariki and the handling of Māori children in state care.

In 2021, she was among Māori leaders who raised concerns about how whānau were treated in court.

Dame Tariana suffered a stroke over the New Year period. Her iwi said at the time she did not have much time left.

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