Māui Pōmare

📍Ōnaera, near Urenui, Taranaki, New Zealand

“Ko au ko Māui Wiremu Pita Naera Pōmare. I was born around 1876 at Ōnaera, near Urenui in Taranaki, of Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Toa descent, and I became one of the Young Māori Party politicians who used education and parliamentary engagement to advance Māori wellbeing in the early twentieth century. I qualified as a medical doctor at Otago and served as a health officer committed to improving the catastrophic public health conditions in Māori communities — the tuberculosis, the typhoid, the diseases of poverty and crowding that were killing my people faster than the land wars had. I served as a Member of Parliament and later as President of the Legislative Council. My work was the unglamorous work of sanitation and vaccination and housing — the work that saves lives without making history.”

Sources: Condliffe, J. Te Rangi Hiroa (1971), Whitcombe & Tombs; Sorrenson, M. Maori Origins and Migrations (1979), Auckland University Press; Dictionary of New Zealand Biography