June 07, 2024
Moana Sinclair fighter for Māori rights at law
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Moana Sinclair is being remembered as part of a line of Māori woman lawyers who have died young after being on the cutting edge of advancing Māori rights.
Ms Sinclair from Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Kauwhata and Rangitane o Manawatu died last week of cancer at the age of 68.
Colleague Annette Sykes says Ms Sinclair first came to prominence at the University of Auckland law school when she and then-partner Tony Sinclair started the group Te Kawau Maro to protest the then-National Government’s fiscal envelope policy of limiting the value of treaty claim settlements.
She worked in Geneva and New York developing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and in Dubai and Noumea before returning to Aoteaora to set up her own legal practice.
“She joins great women leaders that have gone ahead of their time – Atareta Poananga, Gina Rudland, Winnie Jardine, Kathy Ertel, Darlene Henare and they have all passed way to that dreaded disease cancer so I want people to undertand the work we do is toxic – it’s toxic both in the environments we work in but the toxicology actually impacts on our wairua and our tinana,” Ms Sykes says.
She says Moana Sinclair had been in mourning for her partner, Wilson Smith, who died of a heart attack just as they were just due to move into a new home.