Tamati Reedy

Sir Tamati Muturangi Reedy (16 July 1936 – 21 May 2026) was a New Zealand Māori academic, public servant and rugby union player. He served as secretary of the Department of Maori Affairs between 1983 and 1989, during which time he was involved in the Māori loans affair. He was the foundation dean and professor of the School of Māori and Pacific Development at the University of Waikato in 1996, and was later the professor of Māori sustainable enterprise in the School of Management at Waikato. He was knighted, for services to education, in 2011.

Background Reedy was born in Ruatoria on 16 July 1936, the son of Iritana Te Arohanui Hakuwai Reedy (née Haig) and Kotuku Rerengatahi Reedy, and affiliates to Ngāti Porou. On his father's side, his grandmother was Materoa Reedy and his uncle was Arnold Reedy. His niece is Professor Virginia Warriner. He was raised on Kaitoko Station in the Maraehara River valley, in the home of his maternal grandparents, Hirini and Henrietta Haig, and educated at Hiruharama Native School and Manutahi Maori District High School in Ruatoria, where he was dux in 1953. Reedy went on to train as a schoolteacher at Wellington Teachers' Training College.

He married Tilly Te Koingo Moeke, also of Ngāti Porou from Ruatoria and a teacher trainee at the time, and they had eight children. One of their daughters, Mei Reedy-Taare, contested Te Tai Tonga for the Māori Party at the 2017 general election.

In 1956, Reedy served a period of compulsory military training. He had been predeceased by his wife, Tilly, Lady Reedy, earlier that year, in March.

Rugby union A wing and fullback, Reedy was a member of the Hikurangi Rugby Club, and played for the representative team from 1956 to 1962. Over that period he played 38 matches for East Coast, scoring 13 tries (worth three points at the time), five conversions and one penalty goal, for a total of 52 points.

In May 1959, Reedy appeared in a regional All Black trial for players from the East Coast, Poverty Bay, , Wairarapa and Bush unions, in which he scored a try. He did not, however, gain selection for the national team.

Reedy played in trial matches for New Zealand Maori in 1958, 1959, and 1960. On that tour, he played in five matches, and scored one try. He also played in the 28–6 victory over Western Samoa in Apia two weeks later.

From 1963 to 1964, Reedy represented , appearing in 10 matches and scoring four conversions, three penalty goals and one drop goal. The title of his doctoral thesis was Complex sentence formation in Maori.

From 1982 to 1983, Reedy was a Fulbright scholar and associate professor at the University of Alabama, where he taught courses in linguistics and an anthropology paper, "Peoples of the Pacific". However, he was also embroiled in the Māori loans affair, which tainted his time in office, and led to the dissolution of the department and its ultimate replacement by Te Puni Kōkiri. Between 1983 and 1989, Reedy also sat on the board of the Māori Education Foundation, and in 1989 he was a New Zealand government representative at the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention in Geneva.

Honours and awards

Reedy was named as the Young Māori Man of the Year for 1971–1972, and in 1990 he received the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. His investiture, by the governor-general, Sir Anand Satyanand, took place at Hiruhārama Pā, Ruatoria on 25 May 2011.