TeHira Henderson
- Director
- Producer
Te Hira Henderson’s commitment to preserving Māori language and culture is evident from a television career that spans several decades. Henderson's journey offers a remarkable window into the evolution of Māori media representation, and the broader screen industry in Aotearoa. Among the shows he is proudest of is interviewing many key Māori figures for TV series Waka Hui, Kuia and Koroua.
Screenography
Biography
Growing up in Hastings, Te Hira Henderson thrived in the school environment at St John’s College, where he participated in musicals and theatre productions. But it was an unusual church experience that inadvertently set him on his path to television. "In my last year of school, Ngāiwi, my first cousin died . . . my aunty asked me to do the Bible reading at the church service. I thought, Ngāiwi was pretty cool, and church is boring, and he would like all the characters in the bible to have a different accent." When a family member at the service heard Henderson’s retelling, they recommended he call Avalon Studios.
Awards
“Waka Hui enabled us to record the oral history of the Māori nation of this country . . . the native generation that we recorded were the last to speak ‘taketake’ [the ancient language]. For me, that was the most important thing, because that language and the way they built and carried an oral history is now extinct.”
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