June 10, 2022
Henry tohu celebrates best-lived life
Academic, filmmaker and agony aunt Ella Henry says the tohu she got in the Queen’s Birthday and Platinum Jubilee Honours List is a stamp on a well-lived life.
The Ngai Kahu ki Whangaroa wahine was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori, education and media.
She says she was thrilled to accept it, both because it put her in the company of so many other Maori being honoured this year and as an endorsement of the mahi she has taken on over the years.
She feels fortunate her late entry to university study in the late 1980s coincided with starting a family and becoming part of an emerging wave of Maori media, story telling and screen production.
“Those are woven together and so my life and my work and my passion all rolled into one and that is I think the greatest thing that can ever happen to a person, when the things you believe in deeply are able to be translated into work an they are all underpinned by your commitment and your passion and your belief, then that really is a best-lived life,” Dr Henry says
Contact with rangatahi through teaching has allowed her to observe the emergence of a second and third generation of Maori academics and filmmakers.