Arapeta Marukitepua Pitapitanuiarangi Awatere DSO, MC (25 April 1910 – 6 March 1976) was a Māori poet, decorated military leader, welfare officer, writer, linguist, and local politician.

Arapeta Awatere was born at Tuparoa, on the East Coast of New Zealand. He was taken while still an infant by his mother to Whangaruru to be raised by a relative, Heni Mahanga. He was 6 when he returned to the East Coast.

Arapeta Awatere was only 10 when his father died. A year later, his mother died.

After his parents died, Awatere worked as a sailor to pay his way through high school.

In 1928 he joined the New Zealand Territorial Force & then served during WWII with the 28th New Zealand (Māori) Battalion.

Awatere took university courses while working for the Department of Māori Affairs from 1949 & became well known for his welfare work.

Arapeta Awatere was convicted of murder in 1969 & died in prison. His family & supporters consistently maintained that he was wrongfully convicted, but an appeal was too costly.

His autobiography, Awatere: A Soldier’s Story, was published in 2003.

Awatere’s poetry appeared in leading journals and several of his Māori-language poems were later republished in national anthologies such as Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing (1992).

Much of his work, however, was excluded from English anthologies because he wrote primarily in Māori.[30]