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June 06, 2022
Māori achievement recognised in Jubilee Honours List
Waatea Team
Posted On June 6, 2022
Ngāi Tahu leader Ta Tipene O’Regan has been awarded New Zealand’s highest honour in the Queen’s Birthday and Platinum Jubilee Honours list, being appointed a Member of the Order of New Zealand.
There’s also a new Maori knight – scholar and Māori rights advocate Patu Hohepa of Te Māhurehure and Ngāpuhi, who as made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Benji Marshall, who played a record 346 games in the National Rugby League, the most of any New Zealand player in the code, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to rugby league. Mr Marshall, who retired last year after an 18-year career played 31 tests for New Zealand between 2005 and 2019, captaining 21 games and winning the Rugby League World Cup in 2008. He has played for the Wests Tigers, the Brisbane Broncos, the Illawarra Dragons, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, the New Zealand Kiwis and for the Auckland Blues in rugby union.
Artist Lisa Reihana was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to arts.
She was made a member of the order in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list, and since then her large-scale video installation ‘In Pursuit of Venus [infected]’ has been displayed in several locations internationally including at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2019 and in Tallin, Estonia
in 2020. Her large bronze sculpture of Ellen Melville depicting the scales of justice tipped in favour of women is now displayed at the Ellen Melville Centre in Auckland, and her installation Te Wheke a Muturangi exploring the story of Kupe was a feature of this year’s Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts in Wellington.
Greg Matahi Brightwell was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to waka ama. Mr Brightwell founded Aotearoa’s first waka ama club in 1985, the Māreikura Canoe Club in Gisborne, and served as first president of the national body. That followed his building of
Hawaikinui-1, a 75-feet, eight-ton double-hulled canoe which he sailed from Tahiti to New Zealand via Rawhiti a crew of five under captaincy of Tahitian traditional navigator Francis Cowan to replicate the journey of Māori migration from East Polynesia to New Zealand in the 14th Century.
Mr Brightwell is also known for carving likeness of his tipuna, the navigator Ngatoroirangi, on a rock wall beside Lake Taupo in 1980.
Other officers of the order include:
Nursing leader Margareth Broodkoorn for services to health and Māori. Her 30-year career has included a focus on strengthening cooperation between Māori and non-Māori in the nursing profession. In 2019, she became the first Māori to be appointed as Chief Nursing Officer with the
Ministry of Health. During the pandemic, Ms Broodkoorn established and led the Infection Prevention and Control Team for the COVID-19 response, providing clinical guidance on the use of Personal Protection Equipment across the health and disability system.
Former Māori Language commissioner Hinerangi Edwards from Taranaki whānui, Tauranga Moana, and Te Arawa, for services to Māori, governance and education;
Former New Zealand Māori Wardens Association president Tangihaere Harihari-Hughes from Rotorua, for services to Māori and youth;
Health advocate Denise Messiter from Ngāti Pūkenga ki Waiau, who has been key in the development and delivery of kaupapa Māori family and sexual violence support and prevention services, including the programmes the Poutama Mauri Ora, Mauri Tu wānanga. In the 1980s she helped coordinate the establishment of the Hauraki Māori Trust Board and was fir first CEO of the Hauraki Māori-owned health service Te Korowai Hauroa O Hauraki in the 1990s. She is currently manager of Te Whāriki Manawāhine o Hauraki Māori Women’s Refuge;
Dr Oliver Sutherland from Nelson, for services to the law and Māori and Pacific communities. For more than 50 years has worked to address institutional racism in New Zealand and has advocated for reform within the judicial system.
Wi Te Tau Pirika Taepa from Te Arawa, Ngati Whakaue, and Te Āti Awa, for services to Māori art, particularly ceramics. Mr Taepa has been at the forefront of promoting uku, the medium of clay,
within te ao Māori and was one of five founders of Ngā Kaihanga Uku National Collective of Māori Clay Workers in 1987.
Former Waikato Institute of Technology pouarāhi Māori Hera “Bub” White for services to Māori and tertiary education .
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