Te Arawa leader and long-time Māori education advocate, Sir Toby Curtis, has died aged 83.
Sir Toby Curtis was a teacher, a staunch te reo Māori advocate, the founder of many Māori broadcasting initiatives and head of the Te Arawa Lakes Trust. Photo: Supplied / Te Arawa Lakes Trust
The Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Rongomai kaumatua died at his home at Lake Rotoehu early on Wednesday morning, surrounded by whānau.
Sir Toby was a teacher, a staunch te reo Māori advocate, the founder of many Māori broadcasting initiatives, and head of the Te Arawa Lakes Trust.
Born at Lake Rotoehu on 13 November 1939, Nopera Tamihana Curtis was the youngest of the 15 children of James and Taipapaki Curtis.
His parents had aspirations for him to do well at school but with that came the active discouragement of te reo Māori.
Speaking to RNZ in 2014, Tā Toby said his older siblings were punished for speaking Māori at school, so his parents made sure he would not face the same.
"They went out of their way to ensure I didn't speak Māori," he said.
"Our parents were convinced that the only way we could do well educationally was to speak better English, and speaking Māori wasn't going to help us become achievers in education."
After primary school, his parents sent him to boarding school at St Peter's Māori College, where he planned to leave at the end of fourth form to become an electrical apprentice in Rotorua.
Instead, his parents were convinced to keep him in school, and they sold a section of their land at Rotoehu to make it possible.
"When I think back I don't know how my parents and other parents in the community managed to raise kids in the way they did. One can only look back and be so grateful," he said in that 2014 interview.
"I guess it was very well imbued in us that as a way of saying thank you, we needed to achieve something."
And he did.
Curtis initially trained as a primary school teacher, graduating with a Diploma of Teaching in 1972 and a Master of Arts in 1980.
He continued his career to become the principal of Hato Petera College in Manawatū.
Shaking off those childhood worries about te reo Māori, he was instead one of its biggest advocates.
"I had no idea that by language acquisition - particularly the acquisition of te reo - we would perform better as students, we would have a better educational profile. Way back then we didn't see the link."
"It suddenly occured to me that our policies in education that needed to be upgraded, changed, whatever, was based on a policy which believed Māori people were at the lower end of human culture," he said in 2014.
"We have so many perspectives about our way of life, the way we think, the way we behave, which is very good in terms of being a human being. When I looked at our policies it tended to suggest, it tended to reinforce, that view."
He became a Fulbright scholar, studying bilingual education at Hispanic and First Nations schools in the United States.
In 2000, he was made deputy vice-chancellor of the Auckland University of Technology.
Throughout his time, Sir Toby was also heavily involved in Māori broadcasting, helping form several iwi radio stations, Māori Television, and serving as the chair of Te Māngai Paho.
He completed a PhD in 2005, and was knighted in 2014.
For 16 years, Sir Toby was chair of the Te Arawa Lakes Trust, enacting the Te Arawa treaty settlements and seeing the trust's portfolio grow from $33 million to more than $100m.
He also oversaw the return of the governance of the Rotorua Lakes return to Te Arawa in a co-governance arrangement, and the water quality improvement.
Dr Sir Toby Curtis (left), Minister for Māori Crown Relations Kelvin Davis, Rotorua Mayor Steve Chadwick, and Labour MP Tamati Coffey with the Certificate of Title for Lake Ōkaro, which was officially handed to Te Arawa in February 2020. Photo: Supplied
Ngāti Whakaue leader Monty Morrison described Sir Toby's death as a huge loss not only for Te Arawa, but for all Māoridom.
"It's hard to put into words," Morrison said. "He was certainly someone I listened to very carefully. He was one of Te Arawa's finest orators in both Māori and English."
"He had that knack to be able to talk to people whoever they were. He was a master at using humour to get attention."
Morrison said Tā Toby spent his life challenging his own people and the Crown, to improve the lives of Māori and to encourage them to grasp their reo.
"With a real focus on te reo Māori, he was absolutely an advocate and challenged the government on many occasions and as often as we could."
Morrison said his close friend was a staunch advocate to the very end.
"I went out to see him and he was lying there and resting, just the other day. And he was still talking about the challenges that lie ahead.
"Certainly one of the challenges we have in Te Arawa is to continue the work he did in this space."
Sir Toby Curtis will be returned to his marae, Rakeiao, at Lake Rotoiti on Friday.
