More than any individual voice or message it amplified, the radio station has been a megaphone for te mita o Taranaki, the unique dialect of the region’s eight tribes.

Te Korimako – 94.8FM turns 30 next month. And like many Māori born and raised in the shadow of Taranaki Mounga, I grew up bathed in its kōrero. It was probably 94.8 that was playing when my sister crashed Dad’s burgundy Celica and when I crashed Dad’s Mitsubishi Gallant and when I put Dad’s big red van through the back of the shed, writing off not only his van but the shed too. If it wasn’t Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Ten Guitars’, it was 94.8 playing every year Koro took us to Hawera’s A’n’P show, cruising past a hundred families walking the long walk to the Egmont Racing Club’s front gate because Nan had a mobility parking permit. And I know for a fact it was 94.8 where I first heard Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ sitting in the passenger seat of my uncle’s four-wheel drive. A memory that, while not life-changing, has endured 22 years. ‬

The station itself is only a little older than I am, established in 1992 on the Bell Street campus of the Taranaki Polytechnic by the late Dr Huirangi Waikerepuru and Te Ururoa Flavell, the latter since serving as the co-leader of Te Pati Māori and chief executive of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. It began as a three-month trial run entirely by volunteers, a collection of pioneers with the foresight to see what the future could bring. Pitched as “your tribal pulse” and reaching radios across the region, 94.8 went from strength to strength, moving in 1993 to the Rangiātea campus and away again in 1996, amplifying the message and voices of so many pou of our rohe including Archie Hurunui, Tamzyn-Rose Pue and Te Poihi Campbell.  

Te Korimako has always been a beautiful mix of new and old, te ao tawhito and te ao hou, in the morning covering current affairs and in the evening talking through different purakau and karakia. Sown among the kōrero is a soundtrack that perfectly matches this mix, the two songs playing back to back as I write this: K.C and the Sunshine Band’s Boogie shoes and Te Matatini Ki Te Ao performed by an array of modern Māori talent including Pere Wihongi and Rob Ruha. 

More than any individual voice or message it amplified, the station has been a megaphone for te mita o Taranaki, the unique dialect of our region’s eight tribes – Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Maru, Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Iwi, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui and Ngā Rauru Kītahi. This was a part of the vision from the jump: Te Korimako, beginning as many kaikōkorero, returned home to the Taranaki Polytechnic, its Rangiātea campus quickly becoming a Māori hub of sorts with 94.8, Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa all on-site. In the words of one of its founders, Dr Huirangi: “Ko Te Korimako o Taranaki kua whakatūria mō te reo o Taranaki.” Te Korimako o Taranaki was established for the language of Taranaki. 

In truth, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I even recognised Taranaki Māori had an accent, that our brand of reo Māori was in any way different from the rest of the motu. Key features of the mita include the absence of the h sound in kupu Māori; the wh in powhiri being pronounced closer to the wh in whine than the typical English f sound; some unique regional spelling, mounga instead of maunga; and a number of distinct regional kupu – tauheke for old man in place of the more widely known koroua. It must be said that there are many dialects in Taranaki, Dr Huirangi noting that each iwi sounds like the environment that surrounds them. Still, speaking broadly, the key features noted above are what make te mita o Taranaki distinct. As with so many letters in English, I never questioned why the reta h was silent. Not there for decoration but to make clear that wai meant water or river or stream and whai, while sounding identical in the hustle and bustle of a conversation, meant follow. 

The reinvigoration of te mita is one of 94.8’s most important contributions. The waiata and the current affairs and the kōrero tuku iho that sail across its airwaves are not without great importance, but the mita itself is what distinguishes 94.8 from every other frequency. Like te reo Māori contains within it a history, its structure and ingredients revealing how Māori have understood and interacted with the world, so does te mita contain within it the history of Taranaki Māori. 

Take Waitara as an example. Its name, while commonly interpreted as meaning mountain stream, may instead be a reference to the magical journey of a son in search of his father. Waitara really being Whaitara pronounced without the h. As ethnologist Percy Smith tells it, Ngārue was a man of great prestige raised in Taranaki, the whanaunga of Te Moungaroa, the chief and priest of Kurahaupō waka. One day, he ventured to Kawhia where he married Uru-te-kakara. After a run-in with the locals where his mana was insulted, he returned to Taranaki, the now pregnant Uru-te-kakara refusing to go with him, Kawhia being her home. When her baby was born, he was named Whare-matangi and grew to be a strong lad, frequently the winner of games, including teka, where the goal is to throw a dart – sometimes a toetoe reed and sometimes the stalk of the bracken fern – as far as possible. 

Then came a time when, provoked by his peers for being a bastard, he asked his mother where his old man was. She took him to a high ridge near the coast and told him he lives below that snow-clad mountain whose name is Taranaki. Whare-matangi grew a little older and more adept in the ways of a Māori man and decided it was time to find his father. With the blessing of his whānau and having been gifted a magical dart that would be his compass, he set out, throwing the dart and following its lead. After every throw, the dart glided for miles until eventually it fixed itself into the side of his old man’s whare much the same way I fixed my old man’s van into the rear wall of his garage. For this adventure the river was blessed with a new name: Whaitara-nui-a-Ngārue. Or, as it’s remembered today, Whaitara – the path of the dart. 

And so Whare-matangi’s journey has been written and passed down through wānanga. A whole history hidden behind a silent reta, apparent only to those with the proper codex. Te mita o Taranaki: the accent of Te Korimako – 94.8FM, your tribal pulse.

Airana Ngarewa is a Māori political affairs reporter, creating public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air.