Atutahi Potaka-Dewes

To use the reigning Miss Rotorua, Atutahi  Potaka-Dewes’ own words she’s no cookie cutter version of a traditional leggy beauty queen. But then she’s not meant to be.

Since fashion designer Kharl WiRepa revived the Miss Rotorua pageant in 2017 his mission has been to “embrace women of all shapes and sizes, empowering them to be their own person.”

If anyone is their own person it’s Atutahi.

At 28 there are more components to her than an advanced mathematical equation.

Her beauty is the natural kind, no artifice here, and it comes wrapped in a personality as lively as Pohutu in full play.

Atutahi would be the last person to call herself wraith-like. To be politically correct she fits into clothes from the plus size rail. She’s mega talented, a singer, professional kapa haka exponent and on-stage performer with lead roles in the musical theatre’s Dreamgirls production and the hilarious home grown show 8 Scott Ave.  Her day job is Te Arawa FM’s Drivetime presenter.

That’s but the half of it, her kete of achievements includes working with Cian Elyse White, the council’s performing arts director and in 2019 she was handpicked for Lakeside’s Emerging Talent segment.

“I sang This Is Me from The Greatest Showman, I can never describe the amazing feeling I got walking out in front of thousands of people from my home town, that was awe inspiring.”

Rotorua has been home since Atutahi was three when her grandparents who raised her from birth “in the Maori way I was their daughter’s first child” moved from Auckland to Okere Falls.

Her koro (grandfather) was the late Canon Eru Potaka-Dewes, an Anglican minister, historian and poet. Nan, Kiri Potaka-Dewes, a Catholic “and a bit of a rebel in her day” is Whakarewarewa born and bred. 

With that background Atutahi was brought up speaking solely te reo Maori at home and school, initially at Whakarewarewa’s Kura Kaupapa followed by Te Kura Kaupapa o Ruamata.

“Koro and Nan always told me Maori was the first and only language we spoke.  I was really really happy at Ruamata, being taught by whanau.” 

However at eight she discovered Maori was not her sole genetic heritage, that she was in fact part Samoan.

“One day this guy turned up at kura and said ‘hello, I’m your Dad, can I have a hug?’ I was a bit hesitant, koro had always been my father figure, then I saw my birth mum in her car so knew it was okay. My younger sisters Ngamoe and Ariana spent a lot of time with us at Nan and Koro’s”.

The girls’ parents married on Mokoia Island when Atutahi was nine or ten, she went with them to Brisbane’s Logan City.

Culture shock hit hard. “There I was going from the te reo culture and totally surrounded by my Maoritanga to not only learning a whole new Samoan culture but attending a school where only English was spoken.

“I couldn’t understand a thing in English and science but when maths came along I thought ‘yes, the numbers are the same, I’m all good here’.

That was until her teacher asked her what a dozen was. “I said six, she told me it was 12 so I said ‘tekau mā rua’ which is a dozen in Maori.  The teacher and all the kids laughed at me, I definitely didn’t like that feeling. 

“Outside school I was surrounded by a big extended Samoan family who joked me for my Maori ways, that made me shy to speak te reo.”

Far worse was to come.

Atutahi became the victim of sexual abuse. Tears roll as she breaks her previous self-imposed silence revealing the trauma she endured over several years. 

“I’ve only talked about this in dribs and drabs before but now I’m ready to talk about it so people know the demoralising damage it causes. I found my escape in school, sport, dance and theatre, my healing is in music. There are still mentally challenging days but when I’m on form I feel invincible.”

Atutahi knew deep down in her gut what was happening to her wasn’t right, not the way a young woman should be treated. 

“When I was about 14 I got up the courage to call Nan and tell her, she caught the first flight over. She brought me and my sisters home to Okere Falls.”

In Brisbane Atutahi had converted to Mormonism.

“This made for a very spiritual household. There was this life-sized picture of the Indian guru Sai Baba on the wall, Koro would chant to him as well as say karakia [prayers] then go and deliver his Anglican sermon.”

Too embarrassed to return to Ruamata because she felt she’d lost her ability to speak te reo Maori Atutahi enrolled at Western Heights High, taken there by what equated to a coin toss.

“We were at the lights by Boys’ High, Nan said Girls’ High’s that way, Western Heights the other, I told her to turn towards Heights, I don’t know why. I loved it there. In the sixth form [Year 12]  Koro had a heart attack and died. I was devastated; my grandparents were the biggest inspirations in my life.”

“When Koro passed away my Aussie family were trying to convince me to go back there but I couldn’t, Rotorua’s where my home is.”

Graduating from Heights at 18 she entered the then Waiariki Polytech’s Academy of Music. 

“Nan wasn’t too excited about it, she wanted me to go to university, she still wants me to go to university. But the academy was wonderful, I was in a different world, a place full of energy and creativity with older people to learn from.”

She was working in the mall’s fish and chip shop when an aunty sent word she needed her to help fill in for the Whakarewarewa concert party while other members were performing at Te Matatini, the national kapa haka festival.

“I’d been in the Heights kapa haka group, I knew all the songs but my poi was a bit shocking so at first I just followed the aunties’ movements.”  

For nine years kapa haka became Atutahi’s  profession and passport to international travel. “There were times I was working 9am to 9pm moving around all the groups performing at Whakarewarewa, Te Puia and hotels in the city. Then Aunty Corona came and we got the sack.”

Te Puia has been pivotal in shaping her cultural career. In 2017 she was a member of its New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute’s (NZMACI) Tuku Iho Living Exhibition that travelled through Chile, Argentina and Brazil.

“In South America I really connected with the indigenous people. Like Maori their land, environment, connections to their ancestors and the spiritual world is paramount to them.”

She’s toured North America with the same exhibition, has visited Europe with a mate and been to India as a member of a Whakarewarewa group exhibiting at arts festivals in Delhi and its surrounding area..  

With her travelling done Atutahi was in a state of flux when she spotted a Facebook post about the Rotorua Musical Theatre’s 2018  Dreamgirls production.  

“The auditions had finished, some of my friends had major roles, I wanted to be included so hassled the director Bobby Mihi Howard, she found me a place in the ensemble.”

Fate took over as it tends to do with Atutahi, two weeks before curtain up the woman cast to play one of the lead characters Effie White, pulled out.

Atutahi being Atutahi was a knockout, the recipient of rave reviews

8 Scott Ave followed. She played the writer Jack David Grace’s daughter Sarah. “I created my own back story, there was a lot of adlibbing, it was wonderful, I felt I really was at home with my uncles, aunties and cuzzies.” 

Then came Miss Rotorua.

“For some time Kharl WiRepa had been messaging me. I’d known him from school. He was putting the pressure on me to join the Miss Rotorua pageant. I kept turning him down, he said he’d keep messaging until I said  ‘yes’.

“ I talked to my partner Karaitiana Rurehe who’s a carver at NZMACI and a couple of girlfriends, Ngahuia Hona-Paku and Anahera Rangitoheriri. They said they’d enter if I did.”

Theirs was a prizewinning trio with Ngahuia named  Miss Te Arawa and Anahera Miss Mana Wahine, with of course Atutahi taking out the top spot.

Preparations for the September pageant began three months earlier with contestants allocated organisations to fundraise for, Atutahi’s was the Linton Park Community Centre. 

“We did a lot of activities, Ngahuia who was representing Dress for Success and I jointly staged a hangi at Ohinemutu pa. All the aunties and cousins there were awesome,      

Come pageant night contestants were called on to show their individual talents. Atutahi presented three art works each separated by a layer of paper she lifted to reveal the one beneath as she sang, accompanied by her sister.

“I added the art because I didn’t just want to sing, I wanted to show a different side of my creativity. Ripping the drawings’ covers off represented that there is still magic whatever trauma you’ve been through.”   

Her initial reaction to being named Miss Rotorua was an “Are you sure?”

“I accepted the crown on behalf of the people who shaped me to be the woman I am today.

“It was a wonderful journey. If I have inspired other girls to take that journey too then I am very proud.”