Tihirangi Brightwell with his Lincoln Highschool students

Proud to be Me is series of profiles of ordinary and extraordinary people in the Selwyn District. To mark Te Wiki o te reo Māori (Māori Language Week), Coen Lammers talks to Tihirangi Brightwell, Te Reo Maori teacher at Lincoln High School, owner of te reo and tikanga Māori consultancy Whitiara, as well as a driving force behind rapidly growing taonga tākaro (game) Māori Kī-o-Rahi.

Tihirangi Brightwell has been in Rolleston for over a decade, but when he first arrived in Canterbury, he felt a long way from the Taranaki shores and small-town lifestyle that shaped him.

“I grew up on the west coast of the North Island in Ōpunakē, a very cruisy coastal town in between the mountain and the sea,” recalls the 40-year-old teacher.

Now, almost half his life later, Brightwell is firmly part of the Selwyn landscape. He moved south in his early 20s to study at the University of Canterbury, majoring in Māori and Indigenous Studies with a minor in psychology.

He did not plan to become a teacher, but his wife Catie found the Teach NZ Te Huawhiti Career-Changer Scholarship that paid his course fees and opened a pathway into teaching.

He started at Aranui High School, which later merged into Haeata Community College, before accepting a job at Lincoln High School in 2015.

Brightwell has watched the Selwyn district change around him, building in Stonebrook surrounded by paddocks, “and the Lincoln-Rolleston Road was still 80kmh”.

“This is a growing community, which is exciting,” he says, because growth also creates room for other things to grow, “particularly in the Māori space”.

For Brightwell, those connections begin with whakapapa. Taranaki is the iwi he names first, but his ancestry reaches across the North Island, including Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Muaūpoko, Ngāti Kahungunu and East Coast links through Ngāti Porou.

“I’m still unearthing them as I go,” he says.

That sense of connection sits at the heart of his work with students.

“It’s still very important to them,” says Brightwell, who adds that commitment to Te Reo and tikanga is not limited by Māori students

“My strongest and most committed students could be Māori or non-Māori. They all have their own reasons for being so strongly connected to it.”

One of the most powerful vehicles for that connection has been Kī-o-Rahi, the traditional Māori ball game Brightwell first encountered almost by accident in 2013.

In his first year of teaching, students needed a driver and he “basically fell in love with the sport”.

His clearest memory is of a final between Christchurch Boys’ High School and Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Whānau Tahi.

The CBHS side was physically dominant, but their opponents who were smaller, mixed and younger, won the match. “You can’t just win by brute force. There’s tactics to it.”

Tihirangi Brightwell, second from left, with his family, from left, Kaea Brightwell, Catie Brightwell and Manu Brightwell.

The sport carries language and culture in its structure. Trainings begin and end with student-led karakia. The field, equipment and roles are named in Māori and prizegivings involve haka.

“It’s just these layers and layers and layers of culture and language,” says Brightwell, who is quick to add that players do not need to know Te Reo to be able to engage with the sport.

He estimates Lincoln High School’s Māori roll at about 10 percent, yet on a Kī-o-Rahi team of 16 players, perhaps five or six may have Māori whakapapa. Some of the others, he says, are just as committed to upholding the traditions.

“They understand the significance and the word tapu, the sanctity of what they are part of. It has another element to it that separates it from other sports,” says Brightwell.

He says that Kī-o-Rahi at times becomes “transformative” for young people.

Brightwell has also seen a wider shift in the community’s response to Māori culture and describes the change “like a rising tide, slow enough not to notice it in the moment, but unmistakable moving over time”.

Matariki, in particular, has helped bring people together, says Brightwell.

“Māori culture can be shared powerfully when people are given the right setting. All you need to do is create the event or create the moment, get people there and just let them experience it."

Last modified: 17 Sep 2026 9:38am