Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie

Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie was born in Arowhenua and was educated at Tarahaoa Native School and Temuka District High School. She attended Christchurch Teachers’ College and became a teacher. She began her university studies at Otago University and completed a B.A. degree in English and Māori at Victoria University in 1976 She married Malcolm Murchie and had ten children. Erihapeti was active in Māori Women’s Welfare League at regional and national levels from 1963. She was elected to the national executive of MWWL in 1972, was a Vice-president from 1976-77 and was national president from She was research director for the League from 1981-85 and was responsible for "Rapuora: Health and Māori Women". From 1988 till 1996 she was a part-time Human Rights Commissioner; in this capacity, she represented the Commission five times at Indigenous Peoples’ Conferences at the United Nations forums in Geneva and once in Norway. She was prominent in promoting health matters and was the first chair of the Health Promotion Forum for four years. Rehu-Murchie was awarded Q.S.O in 1989 and was presented with an honorary LL.D. from Victoria University in 1990. She was on the Marae Subsidies Committee which was established in the early 1970s.

Rehu-Murchie wrote non-fiction articles and waiata, and wrote a review of Mason’s The Healing Arch in the Listener about the mid 1980s. She participated in the Morning Comment broadcast for four years. She was fond of drama and the arts. She produced plays, and had the lead role in three productions of Bruce Mason’s Pohutakawa Tree: in the NZBC radio broadcast of 1960, in the stage productions in Play House in Dunedin in 1963, and in Downstage in 1984. She was a member of many foundations and committees including the Māori Education Foundation and the Māori Tertiary Selection Committee from 1974-1981; the National Council of Women’s executive from 1977-1980; and the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute from 1978-1996. From 1992-1996, she was on the Massey University Council, the Māori Committee of the New Zealand Health Research Council, and the New Zealand College of Nurses, of which she was a patron. From 1984 she was on the Health Advisory Committee on Health Promotion, was a member of the National Commission for the International Year of the Child, and was on the Prison Parole Board. She was a Justice of the Peace and was invited to make speeches all over the country. She was working on a book of biographies of Ngāi Tahu women at the time of her death, and was also investigating cultural training for social workers at Wanganui Polytech. Rehu-Murchie posthumously received New Zealand’s top award, the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for her work promoting Māori health and human rights issues. She has written under Rehu-Murchie and Murchie.

Biographical sources

• Phone conversation and correspondence with Malcolm Murchie, 19 July and 2 Aug. 1998.
• Te Iwi o Aotearoa 12 (1988): 22.
• Te Iwi o Aotearoa 30 (1990): 24.
• Rehu-Murchie, Erihapeti. "Erihapeti Murchie." What I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Twenty-Two New Zealanders. Comp. Allan Thomson. Wellington, N.Z.: GP, 1993. 160.