She will be remembered for her unwavering promotion of Māori rights and the power of whanau.
Her carefully articulated arguments may have been delivered in a softly- spoken way but there was no disguising her steely determination.
Dame Tariana left the Labour Party in 2004 during the controversy over the foreshore and seabed legislation, then co-founding the Māori Party and leading it into Parliament.
She was born Tariana Woon (Ngāti Apa, Nga Rāuru, Whanganui, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) and she was raised in Putiki on the Whanganui River by her grandmother, aunts and uncles.
It was an upbringing which taught her to believe doing what was right was more important than doing what was popular.
"One foot in the river, one foot in the land. This is who I am," is how Dame Tariana described herself. Accordingly, it was not surprising she came to national attention at the forefront of the occupation of Moutoa Gardens in 1995, highlighting Māori claims along the Whanganui River.
By then she was well known in Maoridom for her work in Māori health and iwi development. With her husband George Turia she had set up a marae-based training programme for young people.
Her first foray into Parliament was as a Labour list MP in 1996. She would go on to serve as a minister in both Labour and National led governments.
In 2002 she became the Labour member for Te Tai Hauāuru, holding that seat in a landslide for the newly formed Māori Party in the by-election of 2004, and remaining in it for another decade.
She was always critical of any government approaches which reinforced deficits for Māori and ignored the strengths and opportunities existing within whanau to create change for themselves.
Dame Tariana was no stranger to controversy.
In the early days of her parliamentary career, she got a telling off from then prime minister Helen Clark for referring to the Holocaust when giving a speech which discussed the impact of colonisation on Māori.
When she was associate minister of corrections in the early 2000s, concerns were raised alleging interference in prison operations, and she was not reappointed in that portfolio after 2002.
Since leaving Parliament, she raised eyebrows when, during an interview about the Labour government’s response to the anti-vaccination protests, she repeated false claims prime minister Jacinda Ardern had been filmed doing almost a "Heil Hitler salute" during her student days.
But what she will be remembered for is the courage of her convictions, regardless of the possible consequences for her own career, something not often seen in our Parliament.
When she parted company with Labour over the foreshore and seabed legislation, she accepted the risk her time as a member of Parliament could end.
She would have found ways to be a political force outside the House to carry on the work of "restoring faith in ourselves as a people".
As former National minister Chris Finlayson said, while it takes a lot of courage to stand up to your enemies, it takes even more to stand up to your friends.
"She always acted on principle and totally without rancour, but she was as tough as old boots."
As he pointed out, she was quiet and dignified and she reminded us that politics is not about the acquisition of power or holding office.
"It’s about acting according to one’s conscience for the benefit of the nation. ‘’
In an interview after leaving Parliament, Dame Tariana said her big hope was for her more than 50 grandchildren and great grandchildren to grow up to be generous kind people, but also to stand up for what is right, "hard though that may be".
It is a sentiment any grandparent can relate to.
