Matire Kereama

Te Aupouri

In 1968 Matire Kereama was an eighty year old "Māori woman elder, of the Aupouri tribe". Matire "was one of the very early pupils of Queen Victoria School for Māori girls which opened in 1901. After four years or so at that school, she graduated as a teacher in about 1906. Her first appointment was to Pukepoto School, Kaitaia. Later she took a position at Ahipara Māori School". Her married name is Matire Hoeft.

Biographical sources

  • Etana, Rikihana. "An Elder’s Tribute." The Tail of the Fish: Māori Memories of the Far North. By Matire Kereama. [Matire Hoeft]. Illus. by Louise Tilsley. Ed. Elsdon Craig. Auckland, N.Z.: Published privately and distributed throughout New Zealand by Oswald-Sealy (N.Z.), 1968. i.

    Non-fiction

  • The Tail of the Fish: Māori Memories of the Far North. Ed. Elsdon Craig. Auckland, N.Z.: Published privately and distributed throughout New Zealand by Oswald-Sealy (N.Z.), 1968.
  • Kereama writes that she recounts in this book the stories told to her by her Aupouri ancestors. The twenty-six chapters are divided into three sections: "Tales of a Grandmother", "Childhood Memories", and "Let the Elders Talk". The book opens with Aupouri whakapapa from the Ngatoki-mata-whaorua, Ruakaramea, Tinana, Mamari, Kurahaupo and Tainui canoes. Kereama discusses the early tribal settlers coming to the North from Hawaiki. She describes her own childhood growing up within the Te Aupouri tribe, noting the winter migration to Awaroa, gold prospecting, the discovery of the mere of Waimirirangi, the division of land at Rotokakahi, food supplies and preparation of the pre-European Māori, the coming of literacy and Christianity, children’s games and singing, and the school at Whangape. In the concluding four chapters Kereama discusses with the old people of the tribe traditional customs surrounding childbirth, arranged marriages, tangi, the phenomenon of Iwiwehea - harbinger of the impending death of a chief, and Te Rerenga Wairua ‘ the leaping place of spirits’. The book concludes with a glossary.

    Reviews

    The Tail of the Fish
  • Cherrington, G. Northland 12 .1 (1969): 56.
  • Grattan, K. J. Ak. Hist. Soc 16 Apr. 1970: 30-1.
  • Puriri, N. P. K. Te Ao Hou 66 (1969): 53-4.