Dr Joseph Te Rito

Dr Joseph (Joe) Te Rito Joe is currently Deputy-Director/Kaihautū Mātauranga Māori with with AKO AOTEAROA, the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.  He was previously Kaihautū Tikanga; Senior Research Fellow – Tikanga and Reo at Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) until December 2015, where he provided advice and guidance in Tikanga Māori, Te Reo Māori and community/Iwi relationships, as well as conducting research relevant to the NPM Research Plan. Joe was also an assessor and senior advisor for NPM's Grants and Awards programme.

Joe’s research examines a range of oral recordings in the Māori language of his elders, with the aim to promote the oral language of these elders as the exemplars for second-language learners. This involves the development of an online 'talking book' comprised of the oral recordings, transcriptions and translations of them, and a linguistic analysis with a focus on local dialects.

Joe’s passion for the language began in 1971 when he became a member of the Te Reo Māori Society at Victoria University of Wellington. The group was active in collecting signatures for the 30,000-signature Te Reo Māori Petition presented to Parliament in 1972. From there Joe became a teacher and has taught Māori in various settings including Ōmāhu Bilingual School, Queen Victoria School, The University of Auckland and EIT Hawke’s Bay where he became Dean of Māori Studies and worked for 17 years. During that time he led the development of the institute’s BA and BA Honours degrees, a series of on-air Māori language courses and the on-campus marae. He is a recipient of the Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship and the award for ‘Best Contribution to Māori Radio – Last 10 Years’ from Te Whakaruruhau o ngā Reo Irirangi Māori (Federation of Māori radio stations). He moved to Auckland to become General Manager – Te Reo Māori and Tikanga Māori at the Māori Television Service and from there moved to NPM in 2004. Joe is the founding and current Chairperson of Radio Kahungunu, a position he has held since the station began in 1988.

 

 

Rongomaiwahine Ngāti Kahungunu
Kaihautū Mātauranga Māori
AKO AOTEAROA

Related Projects

Full project

Project commenced:

Mai i te Mahana ki te Apakura Makariri

What can be learnt and applied now from traditional knowledge and adaptation to future environmental and resource issues?

This project seeks to understand how quickly early Māori society changed from its initial wasteful use of environmental resources soon after the Polynesian migrations, to then live within its ecological means in the face of resource decline pressures. These pressures were largely caused by ongoing extinctions and depletion, compounded by adverse climate change during the period 1350-1900.

Full project

Project commenced:

Kia areare ki ngā Reo o ngā Tīpuna

This research project’s origins date back 27 years when Dr Joe Te Rito helped establish local Māori radio station Radio Kahungunu at the Hawke’s Bay Polytechnic, Taradale. Joe saw how the dialect of his iwi Rongomaiwahine-Ngāti Kahungunu was diminishing in quality, in terms of grammatical and spoken fluency, with each generation. The station was to fill the gap for children who did not have Māori spoken in the home or role models to learn te reo from. While schools looked after education, the station wanted to bring the voices into the home.