Maori leader

honoured

The first day of 1990 belonged to Maori women, when Miraka Rataruhi Petrecevich Szaszy was made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours. For the woman who describes herself as a “geriatric radical”, it was fitting recognition of five decades of dedication to Maoridom, and particularly to the rights of Maori women.

Dame Mira is of Ngata Kuri descent, with links to Te Aupouri and Te Rarawa. She was one of the first Maori women university graduates and did post-graduate work in Hawaii, before returning to work for the Maori Affairs Department. She was a founding mem ber of the Maori Women’s Welfare League in 1951, later secretary and president.

Dame Mira’s roll call of achievements would be impressive spread over the lifetimes of several women. A former board member of the Maori Education Foundation and the Broadcasting Cor poration, she was also a member of the Race Relations Committee and once a nominee for the position of Race Rela tions Conciliator.

Although much of her career was spent as a social worker, Dame Mira was also a senior lecturer in Maori Studies at the Auckland Teachers College and, later, director of the Nga Tapuwae College community centre in South Auckland.

She was in the first women’s delegation to Parliament seeking equal pay for work. She is also a member of the Auckland Synod, the Social Security

Commission, the Muriwhenua Runanga

and the Maori Fisheries Commission.

Dame Mira was in the forefront of the

Muriwhenua fishing claim to the Waitangi Tribunal in 1988. The north ern tribes’ victory established Maori fishing rights and, now, a Maori fishing industry.

Among many younger Maori, particu larly young Maori women, Dame Mira is revered for her empathy with radical views if not tactics and for her public campaign for speaking rights for Maori women on marae. She once described the marae as the “last bastion of male supremacy”. Her public chal lenge to the validity of claims that

tradition denies women speaking rights on the marae —Dame Mira says it is not common practice in the rest of Polynesia has drawn criticism, not suprisingly, from Maori men.

Undeterred, Dame Mira was instrumental in setting up Te Ohu Whakatupu, the Maori women’s secretariat of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

After the death of her husband, Albert, in 1984, Dame Mira retired to the tiny settlement of Ngataki. But her search for peace and quiet was short-lived, as she came out of the Treaty of Waitangi.

“I have settled on the belief,” she once said, “that the Treaty of Waitangi is where I may find the spirituality that is needed by our people. If that treaty is truly honoured then the people will have their dignity and self-esteem as a race re established.”

Dame Mira says her feelings on the Treaty meant she had to search her soul long and hard before accepting the New Year’s Honour. She says her title can “lie idle” if necessary, but hopes it will provide her with extra credibility when speaking in Pakeha forums. □