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She also played violin and cello in the school orchestra and was selected for the Christchurch Youth Orchestra. These skills proved valuable when she became an MP – she would produce her transcripts to challenge inaccuracies in the official record. She excelled at shorthand, and in form five made headlines for typing at 240 words per minute – close to the world record. Outside of school she worked hard, digging potatoes, concreting, doing the laundry and driving tractors.Īt Rangiora High School Whetū became a class leader. This experience made her determined to succeed in the Pākehā education system, and later to advocate for the teaching of Māori language, history and culture in all New Zealand schools. The family lived in a number of places in the South Island during Whetu’s childhood, though she always regarded Rātana pā as her ‘real home.’ 1 At some schools she was the only Māori student, and faced discrimination for the first time. Her early education at the Native School and personal interactions with Rātana set the foundations for her deep, lifelong, Christian faith. Whetū spent her early years in the exclusively Māori environment of Rātana Pā. From an early age, she was raised by her maternal grandmother Amiria (Miria) Solomon because her parents travelled frequently on parliamentary business. Whetū was the seventh child of 12 and the eldest surviving daughter. Before she was born, Rātana prophesied that Whetū would become a political leader and named her ‘Whetū Marama’ in an evocation of the Rātana symbol’s star and crescent moon. He held the Southern Māori seat from 1932 until his death in 1967, from 1936 as a Labour member in a Rātana–Labour alliance. He also had Ngāti Toa and English ancestry.Įruera was one of the prophet Tahupotiki Wiremu Rātana's political advisers, and the first Rātana (independent) MP elected to Parliament. Her father Eruera Tirikātene was Ngāi Tahu, a descendant of the rangatira Tūhuru of Westland and of Motoitoi of Otago. Her mother Ruti (Lucy) Matekino Horomona (Solomon) was of Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Pahauwera of Ngāti Kahungunu, Danish and Jewish descent. Tini Whetū Marama Tirikātene was born at Rātana pā, south of Whanganui, on 9 January 1932. She was also a New Zealand fashion icon with a distinctive sense of style which drew upon her whakapapa and celebrated her love of Māori design. The Treaty of Waitangi and the Rātana faith were central tenets of her personal and political life, and her parliamentary career was focused on the abolition of laws that oppressed Māori.
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An accomplished academic, social worker, designer, sportswoman and dancer, she paved the way for women to combine a political career with motherhood. Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan was New Zealand’s first Māori woman cabinet minister, its longest-serving woman MP, and a staunch advocate in Parliament for Māori interests. It was translated into te reo Māori by Charisma Rangipunga and Hēni Jacob. This biography, written by Helen Brown, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 2018. Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu kaitōrangapū, whetū marama o te ao kākahu, wahine toa