From Whareponga to the world and back again, Encanto Reo Māori’s Hinetu Dell knows there’s no place like home.
Growing up in the remote East Coast settlement as one of 13 siblings, she remembers a simple childhood of catching horses, climbing hills, gathering seafood and looking after one another.
Little did Hinetu know that she’d go on to travel the globe for kapa haka and move away from her Ngāti Porou lands for 40 years, before returning to embrace an unexpected acting career, most recently in Disney’s Encanto Reo Māori.
“We grew up in isolation and didn’t have many material things, but we had everything that mattered,” says Hinetu, 76. “If you wanted a cup of tea, you had to light the fire. So if you went to the wood heap and you found there was no wood, you had to go get it and chop it yourself.
“Our upbringing kept us grounded and from it, we learned what was and wasn’t truly important.”
Te Reo Māori was her first language and Hinetu believes she was always destined to proudly represent her whakapapa [ancestral lineage] and culture.
“Four years before I was born, one of my ancestors told my parents their third child would be a girl. They also said that they were to name her Hinetu. My ancestors already prepared my life for me. My pathway was always te ao Māori [the Māori world] and I’ve never deviated from that.”
Even when she left home aged 18 in 1974, moving to Wellington, Hinetu always knew she would return to her roots.
As a young woman, she joined The New Zealand National Brass Band as a kapa haka performer, met her cornet player husband Kevin Dell, and toured internationally.
Together, they had eight children and settled in his hometown of Invercargill for almost four decades.
“I said to my husband when we got married, ‘There will come a time when I have to go home,’” remembers Hinetu. She moved back to Whareponga in 2005.
She’s not the only one. Six of her children and all but one of her siblings have also returned from different corners of the world, answering the intangible call to live by their maunga [mountain] Hikurangi.
“I don’t think any of them will leave again now,” she reflects. “People that come here say, ‘There’s nothing here’, but to the people that come from here, it’s got everything.
“You can’t rely on the dollar, but you don’t need to when you’re living in a place like this. All the food sources are here – if you know where and when to get it,” tells the grandmother of 25 and great-grandmother of four. “Growing up, we learned how to catch and harvest kai from the beach.”
Hinetu’s always been content devoting herself to kapa haka, her people and her whenua [land]. However, after featuring in a 2017 episode of Whakaata Māori’s archival series Waka Huia, producer Ngahuia Wade saw the potential for her on screen.
“She asked me if I would be part of two films she was working on, Vai and Hinekura. I told her, ‘I don’t have any acting experience and I haven’t a clue how to behave.’ But she talked me into it.
“As a Māori woman forging her way in the film industry, I felt I should support her. I just wanted our Māori world to be out there on the screen. So in the end, I didn’t worry if I could act or not. I just had to pull my socks up and go for it!”
Despite her initial nerves, Hinetu says it felt completely natural depicting characters she related to.
Next came fronting a New Zealand Tourism campaign and now her biggest challenge yet. She’s taking te reo Māori to the mainstream as Abuela Alma in Disney’s reo Māori remake of hit film Encanto.
“Making the words come alive from the paper was sometimes a real challenge,” she admits. “But it was up to me to do it as best I could.”
Encanto won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2022. It’s the latest movie Aotearoa’s Matewa Media have translated to Māori.
Hinetu says she was honoured to be involved.
“My ancestors laid my path out for me, even before I was born,” she says. “So this is not something I’m going to shy away from.
“I’ve been put in these spaces for a reason. It’s best to go forward with humility and purpose because these films will live on forever.”
Watch Encanto Reo Māori in cinemas now, or catch up on the original today on Disney+.
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