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Beatrice Piatarihi Tui Yates (nee Grant), better known as Aunty Bee (11 September 1939 – 6 September 2018) (Te Arawa, Ngāti Pikiao, ) was an entertainer, author and teacher from Rotorua, New Zealand.

From humble beginnings, raised in a small Ngāti Pikiao community in Mourea, "Aunty" Bea Yates became a treasured entertainer, author and teacher

She taught both at Rotokawa Primary School and Rotorua Lakes High School. One of her students was the towering Kiwi basketballer, Steven Adams (link here)

Early Life
Yate was born and raised in a small Ngāti Pikiao community in Mourea MNZM, Rotorua was educated at Whangamarino Primary School, Okere Falls from 1944-52, and Rotorua High School from While at high school, she was prefect, house captain and Māori Club leader. After high school she attended Auckland Teachers’ Training College from 1958-59 where she was Women’s President of the Māori Club in 1959 and gained a Teachers’ College Diploma (N.Z.T.T.C) in 1960. In 1961 she was awarded a Training College Certificate.

Career
Teaching

Her first teaching position was at Rotokawa School in 1960 where she spent the next twenty years teaching. She was the first itinerant teacher in the Māori language and worked in this position for three years, visiting ten schools a week. She was principal of Te Whare Wananga Rotorua Cultural Centre School of Learning from She has worked for ten years at Rotorua Lakes High School Māori Language Linking Scheme, incorporating one intermediate and seven primary schools plus all the third forms at Lakes High School. She was also a keen haka performer for over sixty years and a manager for local shows at the Distinction Hotel, which led to her flying overseas to perform haka and represent Māori.

Author

Aunty Bea was known for her contribution to children’s education as a teacher for 50 years

Entertainment

In 1980, Aunty Bea became a popular Tina Turner impersonator,  performing for charity to raise money for cancer patients. Her career as an entertainer ended in 2016. However, her involvement in community work continued.

She helped establish the Whakapono Health Trust which continues to support the Rotorua Dialysis Unit.

A teacher of more than 50 years around Rotorua, including her first 20 years at Rotokawa Primary School and most recently at Rotorua Lakes High School, she was among the first in the country to recognise the need for children to have a "full puku (stomach)" to be able to learn.

Long before government funding set up breakfast clubs in schools, Aunty Bea had a "soup kitchen" at Rotorua Lakes High School where she would personally prepare kai (food) including her famous rewena bread for hungry children.

Personal Life
Yates married Albert Yates in ...., with whom she had three children Victor Yates, Hohepa Yates and Wahanga Yates-Wright. The couple also had 11 mokopuna (grandchildren) and 11 mokopuna tuarua (great grandchildren).

Death
Yates died of cancer at the age of 78.

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Bea was born in Rotorua and She started writing in 1975. She wrote the song "One Day a Taniwha Went Swimming in the Moana"; she put this song into booklet form. She wrote the first Māori reader book published in 1983; "a further five readers are held by the Education Department". "I started [writing] because I wanted to get Pakeha kids enthused. Bringing Māori words and isolating them. My main aim was not really to write for Māori kids but for both. I began to write Māori resources when I was an itinerant; I was the resource and I began to compile resources. I went to the Tauranga Literature Association to lecture and shared from the heart and told them why I started to write. From then on my stories were seen. Mrs Price, the headmaster’s wife at Lakes High School, got me to send stories to Learning Media and they were accepted. I started writing for Moana Press and Tapu sold well". She has completed papers at Teachers’ Outpost at Waikato and Massey and has a bilingual Language Diploma and Higher Diploma in Teaching (1991) from the University of Waikato. In 1997 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree. She visits many schools speaking at school book weeks all around the Rotorua area; she also goes to guilds and clubs to talk about books and Māori language. She has been a member of many cultural groups, including the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Cultural Group for six years. She has been a Māori warden for seven years. She is a Cultural Ambassador for New Zealand and has made thirteen visits overseas in this position. She recently went to Japan to encourage people to come to New Zealand with Air New Zealand. She is a member of the Rotorua Operatic Society. For five years she was a Te Takinga Marae Trustee and was a Punawhakareia Trustee for two years. For four years she was a Haumingi Trustee and for two years a Takeke Women’s Health League member. She is still writing and is still promoting writing. She wrote articles for Kiwi Kids in Tauranga in 1991. She has been awarded the Queen’s Service Medal (1993), Zonta Award (1995), Paul Harris Fellowship Rotary Award (1997) and the N.Z. Toastmasters Community Award (1998).

In the 1970s, she was invited to become the first Māori itinerant teacher in Rotorua, introducing te reo to children in the city. In those days there were no teaching resources so she was expected to provide her own.

The well-known song One Day A Taniwha was just one of the many stories and songs she wrote and is still taught in schools today.

She went on to publish several children's books.

A natural kapa haka performer and regular singer at the Tudor Towers Nightclub in its heyday, a trip to New York with a kapa haka group about 40 years ago saw the start of her alter ego, Tina Tuna.

She was in a wig shop and tried on a big fluffy one, when the shop assistant told her she looked like Tina Turner. From there, she started a Kiwi-style impersonation show that took her around the country performing to hundreds of conferences groups and shows, including being a regular in Sir Howard Morrison's shows.

But the gigs were never to line her pocket. After each performance she would donate most of her fee to her favourite charities, including the Cancer Society.

A regular volunteer for events such as the Pink Walk and Relay For Life, Aunty Bea also set up Te Whakapono Trust after becoming saddened seeing whānau members having to travel to Waikato Hospital three times a week for dialysis treatment.

The trust established Rotorua's first dialysis unit, a chemotherapy unit, an accommodation unit at the hospital for loved ones to stay in and a mobile hearing clinic that visits country schools and marae.

Aunty Bea was involved helping the Māori Wardens for more than 20 years, she pounded the streets collecting for the Salvation Army, the Cancer Society, the SPCA, Red Cross, RSA, St John, Scouts, Guides and Cubs. She performed on telethons, served on Māori trusts, marae and sporting committees, was a volunteer worker for the Te Ngae Police Community Centre and a one-time candidate for New Zealand First.

At the time of her death she was a current serving Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust trustee, one of four new trustees elected in 2016.

Biographical sources

 * Correspondence and interview with Bea Yates on 30 August 1992 and 24 August 1998.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503438&objectid=12120965

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503438&objectid=12118984

https://www.komako.org.nz/person/1453

https://www.maoritelevision.com/news/regional/te-arawa-matriarch-passes-away

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-daily-post/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503438&objectid=12118984

https://gg.govt.nz/images/mrs-beatrice-yates-mnzm-rotorua

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7tD5VGxzE

http://www.folksong.org.nz/one_day_a_taniwha/index.html

http://auntybea.co.nz/about/