June 21, 2016
Ngati Hine mourns fighter for justice
A long time fighter for social justice and Maori, Rob Cooper, has died.
Robin John Cooper was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2015 for his contribution to Maori health, education and Maori development over the past 30 years.
This included setting up the Ngati Hine Health Trust in the early 1990s and then as its chief executive building it into one of Northland's largest health and social services organisations.
Trust chair Gwen Tepania-Palmer says the New Zealand health sector is a profoundly better place for Mr Cooper's work in it over more than 20 years and the strategies he set for Maori health and development through his work for agencies like the Northern Regional Health Authority became the benchmark for indigenous health development the world over.
A committed Catholic, he was part of an initiative in the 1970s with Manuka Henare and George Kuru that produced two reports for the Catholic Commission for Evangelisation, Justice and Development that highlighted a specifically Catholic view of the Treaty of Waitangi based on the writing of the first Catholic bishop of New Zealand, Jean-Baptiste Pompallier.
A close friend of Dame Tariana Turia from his work on decolonisation in the early 1980s, he was also closely involved with the development of the Whanau Ora policy.
Ron Cooper will be taken to Motatau Marae in the Bay of Islands tomorrow ahead of his interment at Takapuna Urupaa later in the week.
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