"They did not have access to vaccines and we have a mass grave in Whangape to remind us of this tragedy," Brown said.
The Ahipara local is one of six Te Hiku community board elected members – all of whom are double dosed and almost all having had a booster shot.
The third-term community board member is among 61 Northland local government publicly elected representatives across four councils and three community boards.
The Taieka home of her great-grandfather Anaru (Te Rarawa) and wife Maraea Ngawaka (Ngāti Whātua) in the Whangape Harbour was the hub of the community before the local marae was built.
The house served as a marae, hospital and morgue during the pandemic that hit hard around the remote rural community of Whangape, southwest of Kaitaia.
"I remember the story of my great-grand-uncle Parore Ngawaka, my great-grandfather's younger brother, walking miles down the road to their house, sick with the Spanish flu," Brown said.
Tragically, he didn't make it.
"He sat down and died under the plum tree in the front garden."
The 20 to 30 - and perhaps up to 50 - Spanish flu victims, from all corners of the harbour, now lie at the tiny wooden Te Hautapoki/Holy Trinity Church, across the Awaroa River.
"They were stacked on the veranda's waiting to go across the river in the barge," Brown said.
The dead were buried in a mass grave on a wee flat promontory dwarfed by the harbour's steep hilly sides.
Nobody knows how many were buried in the now open grassy area. The wooden headstones erected have since been destroyed in a scrub fire that swept across the burial site.
Roughly 700 Northlanders died from the Spanish flu in just six weeks from the start of November 1918, official records showed.
As well as that tragedy, Brown's triple vaccination status was driven by her firsthand experience as a mother witnessing a vaccination "minimise" the "damaging effects" of whooping cough for her child.
"One was vaccinated against whooping cough, the other wasn't," she said.
"To listen to my unvaccinated daughter coughing, 24 hours a day, for three months, it was awful. I really did think she was going to die."
The end of smallpox, which Brown remembered from earlier in life, had also shown the value of vaccines.
She was now working hard to encourage others in her community to get vaccinated.
"I have been a vocal promoter of vaccination as I believe in herd immunity, minimising risk for our health system and vulnerable people. But I understand everyone has their reasons for choosing not to," Brown said.
She herself had been initially hesitant around the Covid-19 vaccine due to the "speed of the response".
"But I read the information provided and weighed up the risks/benefits to myself and those I interact with and decided that it would be irresponsible of me not to choose vaccination.
"I have an autoimmune disorder and I have had some side effects, but I am managing these and figure that this discomfort outweighs the risks of getting Covid," Brown said.
Brown said at the end of the day if everyone practised good hygiene habits, wore face masks properly, minimised physical contact, and sought regular testing then "hopefully, we can go into the future safe and well".
