Matahi Brightwell ONZO. Picture by Rebecca Grunwell
Matahi Avauli Brightwell has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the latest honours list.
He said from his home in Gisborne that when he was contacted about the possibility of being honoured, he called a family meeting.
“My family convinced me it would be a good thing to accept,” he said.
“The reasoning was that the award was made on behalf of New Zealand for New Zealanders . . . the whole country. Secondly, I could use my award to inspire other Maori and help them in their endeavours.”
Mr Brightwell’s achievements in relation to waka ama have been widely recognised. He pioneered the reintroduction of waka culture to New Zealand, forming in Gisborne the first waka ama club in the country, Mareikura, persuading the international body to have the world champs in Auckland in 1990, serving as the New Zealand body’s first president and travelling the country helping to set up clubs.
He was one of the first three inductees of the Waka Ama New Zealand Hall of Fame and has been honoured as a sporting legend of Tairawhiti.
Mr Brightwell had the standing to be able to spread t he word about waka ama because of his part in a momentous voyage from east Polynesia. He and his father-in-law Francis Cowan, along with a small crew, sailed the double-hulled voyaging canoe Hawaikinui from the Society Islands to New Zealand in the last nine weeks of 1985.
Mr Brightwell, with 11 years of marae-based training in the traditions associated with carving, canoe-building, tattooing, history and genealogy, had led the canoe-building efforts.
He says he has been an artist all his life, but the practical parts of his calling had their beginnings in decisive action by his father, Mareikura Brightwell, and his father’s mother, Te Huatahi Susie Gilbert, 53 years ago.
“I grew up in Masterton and my father put me on a bus to get me out of Masterton to be cared for by his mother in Otaki,” he said.
“I was 15 and I was a bad boy, running with a gang of bad boys, breaking windows, fighting. My father saved my life, and my grandmother put me on the marae. She contacted her cousin Matenga Baker and asked him to take me to a master carver to be taught. That was Hona Gardiner. He was a master of Tarawhai art of Te Arawa tribe of Rotorua.
“It was like a light going on, just witnessing the technology and the discipline . . . it appealed to me. That was the beginning of my art career . . . 1969. I am one of only a few
tohunga whakairo (experts in sculpture) trained in a marae environment.”
Other carvers who taught or influenced him included Hone Heke, Kohe Webster and Rua Kaika.
Mr Brightwell is also known as the creator of the Lake Taupo rock carvings which have attracted international attention, and as the principal carver of a 45-metre waka taua (war canoe) called Te Aio o Nukutaimemeha, which he regarded as a symbol of the fight against what he saw as threats to Maoridom: alcohol, drugs and tobacco.
In his youth, he was known as Greg Brightwell. In Tahiti, the Tahitians gave him the name Matahi, after the last warrior the French killed in a rebellion at Ra’iatea in 1893.
The name Avauli is a Samoan high chief title conferred on him for his waka ama work in South Auckland.
Mr Brightwell’s wife Raipoia is also heavily involved in waka ama and in the Mareikura club. She, too, has been inducted into the waka ama hall of fame and the Tairawhiti sporting legends.
The missionary and community work of Gisborne nun Sister Cynthia Kearney has been recognised with the Queen’s Service Medal.
“My first reaction to the honour was shock. I know so many others who have given their life to missionary work and serving the community. So it is humbling to be recognised,” she told The Herald.
A trained teacher, she became a sister of Our Lady of the Missions in 1964 and has devoted her the majority of her life to helping those in need.
Wairoa-based Hinerangi Rachael Edwards (Taranaki Whānui, Tauranga Moana, Te Arawa) is to be made an officer of the New Zealand order of merit for her services to Māori, governance, and education.
Ms Edwards co-founded AATEA with her husband Kiwa Hammond in the year 2000. AATEA started as a vehicle to work with communities that they whakapapa to, primarily Taranaki, Te Wairoa and Moriori Peoples.
AATEA is an organisation that helps grow kaupapa Māori influence and contribution to shaping Aotearoa New Zealand’s future.
AATEA works with government departments, local governments and organisations who are wanting to be better te tiriti partners.
Ms Edwards has been involved in many areas of research and facilitation, key to which has been a strategic kaupapa Māori focus.
She is a member of Te Kāhui Ahumahi and since 2021 has chaired Ringa Hora Services Workforce Development Council as part of the Reform of Vocational Education.
Ms Edwards has been a founding trustee and director of Korou Digital Trust and Agency since 2019 which aims to create equitable access to digital careers in rural areas such as Te Wairoa.
She is also a trustee of Poutama Trust and member of the Māori Economic Development Advisory Board across government.
Ms Edwards previously served as a Māori Language Commissioner and on the Parininihi Ki Waitotara group boards, including as Parininihi Ki Waitotara Education trust chair.
- - - Full details in Tuesday's Gisborne Herald.