Her formative years were spent in a monolingual Maori language community at a time when most of the food on the table was sourced from the land, bush and river. Growing up in this environment instilled in Te Haumihiata a passion for te reo Maori, a love of native flora and fauna and a compulsion for growing things. Persuaded by Timoti Karetu to attend university in her 30s, Te Haumihiata went on to become a lecturer at Waikato University and then worked for many years at Te Taura Whiri, eventually becoming Kaitiaki Reo and a national authority on the language. Her recent book Te Rataka a Tetahi Kohine, a translation of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, was distributed to schools across Aotearoa in 2019.