Anau Pare Richardson née Ruha

Anau Pare Richardson was born in Raukokore and was educated at Raukokore Native School and Hukarere Māori Girls’ School in Napier from She trained as a Dental Nurse at the Wellington Dental School from 1956-58 and gained the Dental Nurses’ Certificate in 1958. She married Peter Richardson in 1960 and in 1961 started the Māori Anglican Cultural group with the Rangitikei-Manawatu Māori Pastorate. She formed a children’s Māori group within the Ohakea and Bulls farming community. She joined the Parewahawaha Māori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL). She began to get more qualifications through correspondence school in response to a call from the 1970 MWWL Conference in Invercargill for those with te reo Māori to teach in schools. She gained a Māori Interpreter’s Certificate in 1973 and taught Māori culture and songs in primary schools in the 1970s. In 1971 she began teaching taniko at Turakina Māori Girls’ College in Marton, and from 1972-85 was H.O.D. of Māori language, and was handcraft and culture teacher at the college. Since 1975 she has been a voluntary part-time teacher at the seminars for Otaki/Porirua Trusts Board Scholarship holders and has been a voluntary teacher, adviser and hostess at educational seminars held at Parewahawaha marae in Bulls since 1967. From 1983-84 she was a part-time student/teacher for Te Wananga o Raukawa in Otaki. In 1988 she became a certified Māori interpreter endorsed by the Māori Language Commission. In 1992 she graduated with a B.A. in Social Sciences from Massey University and later gained the Diploma in Māori Development. In 1992 she was appointed lecturer in Māori Studies at Massey University where she lectured with other Māori women in a Māori Studies Department course on "Mana Wahine" and also taught in the post-graduate Museum Studies course. From 1997, Peter and Pare were part-time lecturers for Te Wananga o Raukawa in Otaki which has an outpost in Palmerston North.

Pare was a judge at many cultural competitions including the Australian National Cultural Competitions in Melbourne in April 1992, and two Regional Annual Māori Speech Contests (Pei Te Hurinui Competition in Stratford in 1988 and in Palmerston North in 1989). She was one of four judges for Turakina Māori Girls’ College Annual Cultural Competitions in 1991. She was a member of the National Māori Language Syllabus Draft Committee for Secondary Schools from 1983-1985, representing Heads of Integrated and Independent Secondary Schools. She was Māori language examiner for School Certificate Māori Orals from 1978-1991. Pare was skilled in taniko and won the MWWL National taniko weaving competitions twice (1964-65). In 1987 she exhibited a taniko wall hanging and bag in “Te Puawaitanga”, a national exhibition of Māori and Pacific Island weaving which ran concurrently with “Te Māori - Te Hokinga Mai - The Return Home” from March-May 1987. In October 1992 she was a member of a women’s weaving group which attended the South Pacific and Aotearoa Arts Festival in Rarotonga and Western Samoa.

In January 1988 she spoke on Māori people and the language at a “Pot Pouri” session at the 16th F.I.P.L.V. [Fédération Internationale Des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes] World Congress on Language Learning at the Australian National University, Canberra. In 1990 she attended the Second International Conference for Indigenous Women at Karasjohka Samiland, Norway. She had a strong involvement with Parewahawaha Marae in Bulls. Her husband, Peter, is chair of the Raukawa Māori District Council and a representative member for Ngāti Raukawa on the New Zealand Māori Council. She wrote a history of Parewahawaha Marae that remained unpublished at the time of her death, although her whanau is working towards its publication. She was also working on a history of the Māori language. She was editor of a bi-monthly Māori Anglican newsletter Te Karere that is circulated in the Rangitikei-Manawatu Pastorate. She died on 19 May 2000 and is buried at Fraser Cemetery in Bulls.

Biographical sources

• Correspondence with Kim Savage, 16 Sep 2004.
• Interview and correspondence with Pare Richardson Aug. 1992 and 18 Feb. 1998.