Maggie Papakura

Kaea, Issue 5, 1 February 1981, Page 24

Maggie Papakura

Fifty years later and 12,000 miles away, a famous guide is still remembered

Recently returned from the United Kingdom, her home for twenty-three years, is Tony Curtis of Rotoiti. It was interesting to learn that even at the other side of the world is a small but close and thriving Maori community, based in London. We hope to hear more from them in future issues. Meanwhile Tony tells us about another Maori woman, also from Te Arawa, who made her home in Britain and died there over fifty years ago.

An unusual unveiling service took place in the small Oxfordshire village of Oddington last April. It marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Maggie Papakura, the well-known Whakarewarewa guide, scholar and author.

Her fascinating life began in 1872. She was born Makareti Thom at Tarawera, of a Tuhourangi mother and an English father. Following the Tarawera eruption in 1886 and Tuhourangi’s migration back to their original home at Whakarewarewa, she became a guide at what was even then a booming tourist resort. It was during this period that she adopted the name by which she is best known: “Maggie” because few of her Pakeha charges could pronounce her real name; and “Papakura” after one of the Whakarewarewa geysers she showed tourists in the course of her work. A further change of name occurred when she married an Englishman, Willian Dennan. She had her only child by him Te Aonui Dennan, who was later to marry another famous Whakarewarewa personality Guide Rangi.

A photograph of Maggie Papakura taken before she left New Zealand

Maggie in her home at Whakarewarewa

London’s Maori community at Oddington, Left to right: Scotty McPherson, Principal of St Stephen’s School, spent a year in Britain on a research fellowship; Jim Wiremu, originally from Kaitaia, has lived in Britain for more than thirty years; Les Gandar, New Zealand High Commissioner to the UK; Rachel Windsor, another Tai Tokerau Maori now resident in London; Mrs Betty McPherson; Two of Maggie Papakura’s grandchildren. Barbara Dennan, in the cloak, unveiled the stone; Ben Gerrard of Hicks Bay, employed at New Zealand House in London; Tony Curtis of Rotoiti

1911 saw the coronation of King George V, and among the occasions organised to celebrate the event was an imperial exhibition in London. Already famous in New Zealand, and well known to British people who had travelled here, Maggie was chosen to represent her country at the exhibition, along with a Maori performing group and a collection of examples of Maori art which included cloaks, greenstone, carvings and a whole meeting house. This trip was to change her life. She had already met, in New Zealand, a wealthy farmer called Richard StaplesBrowne. She met him again in England and they married. She settled in Oddington and, apart from a brief visit in 1926, never saw New Zealand again. She certainly never severed her ties with New Zealand, however. During the First World War, many New Zealand troops, Maori and Pakeha, were entertained at Oddington Grange, and after the war she erected a memorial in Oddington Church to the memory of Maori troops killed in action. Having lived the lives of a guide and an English farmer’s wife, she adopted a new career in the mid 19205, when at the

age of 54 she became a student of anthropology at the University of Oxford. She completed a valuable study of her people called Makareti Old Time Maori. Unfortunately she did not live to see the book published; she died in 1930, and Old Time Maori was not published until 1938.

The book has long been out of print, but other reminders of Maggie’s stay in England remain. In New Zealand House in London are two of the carvings she took with her in 1911. During the Second World War they adorned and some say protected H.M.S. Maori, which was sunk by German bombers in 1942 but without loss of life.

And in Oddington itself are further reminders. The memorial to the Maori dead of the First World War still occupies its place inside the ancient church, while outside, in the unlikely setting of an English country churchyard, lies the newly unveiled memorial to a remarkable woman.