Mākereti Papakura: First indigenous woman to study at Oxford to receive posthumous degree

RNZ News

30-04-2025

Mākereti Papakura.
Photo:
Supplied / University of Oxford
Pioneering Māori scholar, Mākereti Papakura, will receive a posthumous degree from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford more than 100 years after she began her studies.
Born in Matatā in 1873, Mākereti is believed to be the first indigenous woman to matriculate to the University. She enrolled in 1922 to read Anthropology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where much of the teaching was conducted at the time, and at the Society of Home Students, now St Anne's College.
In her research she explored the customs of her people of Te Arawa from a female perspective. Tragically, she died in 1930, just weeks before she was due to present her thesis.
The degree will be awarded at a ceremony presided over by the University's Vice-Chancellor later this year in Oxford's Sheldonian theatre. Members of Mākereti's family and representatives of the Māori community are expected to attend.
June Grant, speaking on behalf of Mākereti's whānau and iwi Tūhourangi - Ngāti Wāhiao, said her whānau are humbled by the recognition and the knowledge that her work in academia will be appropriately honoured.
"It was such a remarkable story in anthropology, because at the time anthropologists were normally white men studying about other cultures, which was just the norm and so for a woman to actually document her own living story was quite unusual. So I don't think she got much support when she was doing her study, I think it might have been dismissed as women's work."
Professor Clare Harris, Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography said Mākereti is an inspiring figure, not only to many in Aotearoa New Zealand but to students and scholars around the world
"We are delighted that the extraordinary achievements of Mākereti, the first indigenous woman to study at Oxford, have been recognised by the University of Oxford with the award of a posthumous MPhil degree."
Mākereti Papakura.
Photo:
Supplied / University of Oxford
Mākereti's thesis was posthumously published by her good friend, Rhodes Scholar, and fellow Oxford anthropologist, T.K. Penniman, in a book titled
The Old-Time Māori
. It became the first ethnographic study published by a Māori author and is recognised as such by the New Zealand Royal Society.
Grant said Penniman sent the papers back to her whānau at Whakarewarewa with Mākareti's son Te Aonui, who lived with her in England, and were given to the elders of the village to 'ratify' her work.
"But what bothers me most is that I looked up [Penniman's] biography and he didn't pass away until 1977, so I could have rung him in the 1960s and 70s and had huge conversation about Mākareti and he would have told me things that he knew that I would not know otherwise," she said.
She is now telling the younger generation that if the want to learn about their family they need to talk to their elders now, because they may not get many chances.
"I gathered my mokos around me last week and I said, 'I'm gonna talk to you about Mākareti your great nanny and what she did and how powerful her story is,' and I honestly could see two or three of them just glazing over like 'whatever' because they're 8, 9, 10 and 12 and they're not probably interested now, but they will be in time to come. So it's important that the stories are carried on and it's important that they were written too."
Grant said Mākereti was schooled in her ancestry by her great-grandparents, by people who were born in the first half of the 19th century and so had lived ancient Māori practices. But she also had knowledge of the Pākehā world and even spoke Latin.
"She broke conventions because nobody went to Oxford in 1923. I mean, suffrage had only just sort of been around for about 10 years or 15 years... She didn't step backward, she always stepped forward."
Mākereti Papakura.
Photo:
Supplied / University of Oxford
Before Mākereti moved to the United Kingdom in 1911 she worked as a guide in the village of Whakarewarewa, even showing the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, the future King and Queen of England, around the village in the early 1900s.
The whānau still have Mākereti's diary from 1907 and Grant said she loves 'diving into it' and it takes her back to the time Mākereti was writing.
"But we don't have her diaries from England, so we don't really know much about her life there, but we know a lot about her life in the village because it's in the book called the
Old-Time Māori
.
"She recorded our relationships, our whakapapa, our arts, our taiao, everything about Māori life she documented."
Grant said the people of Tūhourangi - Ngāti Wāhiao in Whakarewarewa village are still carrying Mākereti Papakura's story on.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.