Hinemoana Baker

Hinemoana Baker (Ngāti Tukorehe, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Kāi Tahu) (M.A.)

Creative and Cultural Advisor

Hinemoana Baker is a writer, musician, educator and cultural consultant living in Berlin, Germany. Hinemoana works with museums and cultural institutions in Europe towards goals of decolonising their collections and practices through creative collaborations. This work has been inspired and ignited through her having participated in several ancestral remains repatriation projects from 2020-2023. Through Te Arikirangi’s mentorship and guidance, Hinemoana took on the role of kaikaranga and kaitautoko in many significant hand-over ceremonies from Vienna to Leipzig, under the auspices of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand’s ‘Karanga Aotearoa’ repatriation programme.

Hinemoana is an award-winning published poet and performer, with decades of experience on stages using sound and language to both entertain and educate. Her latest collection of poetry, ‘Funkhaus’, was a finalist in Aotearoa New Zealand’s national book awards in 2021, and will be published in translation (German/English) by Voland & Quist AZUR Edition (Berlin) in October 2023. As a singer and sound enthusiast, Hinemoana currently sings soprano in Germany’s pre-eminent queer choir, ‘Amaryllis Berlin’, under the leadership of Uta von Willert. 

Alongside her work with museums and her writing and educating roles, Hinemoana is also currently completing her PhD in Cultural Studies through Potsdam University. In her insistently autoethnographic thesis, she intervenes in discourse about Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 politics, using the poetics of the Transit of Venus to draw out the country’s current and historical neo-liberal, settler colonial frameworks.

Hinemoana’s support for and belief in Kaea’s projects is unconditional and passionate.

‘It is an enormous privilege to bring my various skills to bear on projects which are so healing and beneficial for communities of origin around the world. This is important and overdue work, and it’s an honour to be invited into Kaea’s realm of influence in this field. ’

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Image Credit: Ashley Clark, 2019