New Zealand Māori activist Titewhai Harawira passed away on January 25, 2023 in Avondale. She was 90.
Titewhai Harawira was born in 1932 in the Northland farming area of Whakapara.
Harawira trained as a nurse. She subsequently became a political commentator and civil rights campaigner.
In the 1970s, Harawira became a member of the protest group Ngā Tamatoa and campaigned against bitter criticism, of the Māori language.
She was among a small group that formed the Waitangi Action Committee in 1979 to shut down Waitangi Day celebrations until the Treaty of Waitangi was honoured.
In 1985, Dame Whina Cooper, Eva Rickard and Harawira led a hikoi at Waitangi.
In 1990 she went to the Netherlands to ask the government there to take back the name “New Zealand” so that the original Māori name “Aotearoa” could be used instead. She was on the New Zealand Māori Council and was a talkback host at Radio Waatea.
When the Māori Party was formed in 2004, Titewhai wanted to stand as a candidate for it in the general election of the following year, but it was her son Hone who entered Parliament as a Māori Party MP.
During Waitangi Day celebrations Titewhai Harawira often accompanied prime ministers onto the local marae.
Titewhai Harawira married John Harawira in 1952, and they settled in Avondale in Auckland. They had nine children and adopted another three. John Harawira died in 1977.
Titewhai’s’ son, former MP Hone Harawira, said she would lay at her home in Avondale for a night before going to Hoani Waititi Marae in Henderson to lie in state. She would return to the north for burial.