Mākereti Papakura, the first indigenous woman to study at the University of Oxford, will receive a posthumous degree from the institution nearly a hundred years after attending.
She died in 1930, just weeks before her thesis was due, and her whānau have been fighting for recognition of her achievements for decades.
A small group of her female descendants from Tūhourangi and Ngāti Wāhiao gathered today at Whakarewarewa Thermal Village in Rotorua to celebrate and talk about their “Kui Maggie”.
For Bella Mike, hearing the news made for a “wonderful day”.
“She is Māori, she’s a woman, she is a great leader for us and this generation, and generations to come, so I’m really proud to have her as my kui.”
June Northcroft Grant said the family have been waiting a long time. “This conversation started probably about 30 years ago. We never expected that they might do something about it — we hoped that they would.”
Papakura enrolled at Oxford in 1922 where she studied anthropology. Her thesis explored the customs and practices of Te Arawa from a female perspective and was published posthumously eight years after her death in a book title The Old Time Māori.
The scholar lived during a time where Māori culture and language were in decline due to the impact of colonisation and the suppression of te reo Māori.
“She thought that she was writing about the last words of her people,” said Northcroft Grant, “because the language was going to be redundant, and there was no use to continue.
“That was her reality, so she documented it.”
Her thesis was the first ethnographic account of Māori life by a Māori scholar.
For descendant Kirikowhai Mikaere, Papakura was an example of a great leader and “incredible trailblazer”.
“One hundred years ago, she went to the other side of the world, having this internal self-confidence about the depth of our knowledge system. In sharing that, and having our own mana over the sharing of our mātauranga, she influenced this kind of global sector of anthropology.”
What set her work apart from those of her contemporaries wasthat she was a female studying in a male-dominant field, said Mikaere.
“It was mainly English men travelling around the world and then writing up through their lens ‘these are the cultures’, and here was our kuia who went all the way over there and said ‘kāo, kei ahau taku waha (no, I have my mouth), I can speak for us, and actually, I will write about my culture’.”
She said academics in the past focused on the men in those cultures, but her kui wrote about women and children.
“That again was a really big point of difference,” said Mikaere, “and I think we’ve got letters to show that a lot of the sirs and, I guess, wardens of the houses at Oxford recognised the scientific value of what she was bringing to this, one of the oldest academic institutions in the world.”
Northcroft Grant said her “nanny” documented her life with beauty and grace writing in English, Māori, and Latin. It was a shame she passed before attaining her degree, she said.
“It was a sad end to her life that she died so suddenly, and that her work was, more or less, it was published and it was put into museums and universities, but it was never a volume of work that was celebrated in any other form.”
Lani Kereopa said sharing kōrero about “Maggie” as a whānau gave them an opportunity to reflect and appreciate their ancestor’s legacy.
“Every few years you might pick [her book] up again and there’s something new you learn that you think, ‘I don’t remember reading that’, but those gifts just keep on giving.
“The kōrero, the history, I guess as you learn more things, start to connect more over the years, so the rich taonga that she left, we’re just so grateful for.”
Papakura will receive a Master’s in Philosophy of Anthropology from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford.
Members of her whānau and representatives of her iwi are expected to attend a ceremony later this year.
Glossary
kui/a – grandmother, female elder
mātauranga – knowledge, education
kāo, kei ahau taku waha – no, I have my mouth
taonga – (often prized) possessions, effects or objects; treasure.
