Tangiwai Rewi

Noo Waikato, noo ngaa hapuu o Ngaati Tiipaa, Ngaati Tahinga, Ngaati Amaru.
Tangiwai has been an educator from 1990 in bilingual and Māori medium education as a teacher and principal, then with the Ministry of Education (MOE) setting up Māori immersion schools, negotiating education partnerships with Iwi, organising education summits nationally, licensing Early Childhood centres and assisting primary school communities with post education review office audits. Tangiwai also managed a national social marketing campaign to keep Māori youth engaged in school longer. In 2008 Tangiwai was appointed to a senior lectureship teaching Māori education at the University of Otago. Following a brief interlude back at the MOE, 2021 revamping NCEA from a Māori perspective and working in Māori policy, then The Ministry for Primary Industries, 2022, managing Customary Fishing alongside Iwi nationally, she returned to Waikato University in November 2023 to take up Te Amokapua, Dean and Professor within Te Pua Wānanga ki Te Ao, Māori and Indigenous Studies, where, alongside her colleagues, she has been focused on revitalising the faculty since her return from a student, staffing, curriculum and community perspective. Tangiwai's interests lie in te reo me ngaa tikanga Māori, Maaori education and pedagogy, policy, oral tradition, and because of her PhD project, preserving the narratives of kaumaatua. Post doctoral studies were delayed by covid, however Tangiwai aspires to complete comparatives studies with other iwi taketake in a similar arena. Having been away from academia for a short while, her most recent publication explores a particular waiata, Kiwi Weka, allowing readers a glimpse into the Maaori world in the Waikato during World War Two. In doing so, it explores her own whakapapa and reveals relationships between Maaori and overseas servicemen, the economic and social circumstances of the times and the ongoing influence on Waikato Maaori into the 1960s through to today.