Tungia Dorothea Gloria Baker (8 October 1939 – 25 July 2005) was a New Zealand actor, weaver, and administrator. Her notable acting roles included Ngahuia in the 1980s television drama Open House and Hira in the 1993 film The Piano. Baker was influential in contemporary Māori theatre, Māori film making and Māori arts. She named the Taki Rua Theatre, and was a founding member of Māori artists' collectives Te Manu Aute and Haeata. Early life and education The daughter of noted Māori elder and Ngāti Raukawa paramount chief Matenga Baker of Ōtaki, Baker was born on 8 October 1939 in Ōtaki. Her iwi affiliations were Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa, Te Āti Awa and Te Arawa. She went to the Queen Victoria School for Māori Girls in Auckland where she was head prefect from 1953 to 1957 and dux in 1957 and 1958. She did not learn to speak Māori growing up, as her parents believed it would be better for their children to speak English. Baker received an American Field Service (AFS) Scholarship in 1958 and she went to West Bend in Wisconsin. She returned to Wellington and studied at Wellington Polytechnic. She later became the first New Zealand National Representative of the American Field Service from 1972 to 1976, pioneering marae visits for incoming AFS scholars. Career Baker became invested in contemporary Māori theatre as it was emerging in the 1970s alongside Bruce Stewart, Rowley Habib (Rore Hapipi) and Jim Moriarty. In 1976 Baker was an actor with the newly formed company Te Ika a Maui Players to present the stage production Death of the Land written by Habib. Death of the Land was a courtroom drama about the sale of Māori land, and Baker went on to also act in the television production in 1978 that had footage of the 1975 Māori Land March. These productions were notable at the time as New Zealand stories about Māori issues written by a Māori person and were part of the Māori renaissance. Baker took place in an Maori artists and writers conference (hui) at Toa Rangatira Marae, Porirua in 1978. Baker was a tutor at Wellington Polytechnic in 1979 and realised she wanted to learn Māori language herself. She went to Rotorua for this purpose and learnt on a marae at age 40. In the 1980s Baker was part of Te Manu Aute, a collective of Māori film-makers who set