Natalie Richards is committed to health and wellbeing. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER
Natalie Richards is committed to health and wellbeing. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER
Te Arawa wahine inspiring others, leading by example.
OUR People has said it before and we don't hesitate to repeat that Te Arawa is blessed with a swag of uber-talented young women.
Latterly the marae power-base has equalised; today there's just as likely to be men in that once female-dominatedarena, the kitchen, while younger women have moved out in front, leading by example.
Natalie (Pare) Richards is one of them. Talk fests leave her frigid, she's a "cut to the chaser", a doer.
Her capabilities have been harnessed in the capital. She's a member of a Parliamentary Services focus group which has employment relations as its major objective; employment relations between MPs and their staff.
Natalie's at the coal face of how MPs and their staff interact. For the past seven years her day job's been senior support person to Waiariki MP, now Maori Party co-leader, Te Ururoa Flavell, working out of his Rotorua office.
Parliamentary Services is her employer, not the MP.
Although professing not to be a political animal, she does subscribe to the Maori Party's policies and ethos. Being of Te Arawa descent and her three sons embracing all things Maori are matters of personal pride. The boys are kohanga and kura-educated, fluent in te reo Maori. The eldest, Dallas, is already making his mark as a Te Arawa young gun. He was born when Natalie was 18; she married her children's father, Damian Hawe, five years after Dallas' birth.
Being a young mum didn't hold her back, she's never been jobless.
After initially working at Farmers and Quality Bakers, her "serious" career began when she became PA to her kuia (grandmother) Maxine Rennie (Our People, March 19, 2011), founder of the nationally recognised Mana Social Services.
As a child she lived virtually next door to "Nan" in Ohinemutu. It was a given that she'd join the village's Magic of the Maori cultural group, performing at Tamatekapua wharenui (meeting house).
"Ohinemutu was a great place to live, you can't beat growing up in a close-knit community like that, it taught you to appreciate your culture, to acknowledge the tourist factor, how important it is to Rotorua."
Natalie Richards is committed to health and wellbeing. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER
After a hiatus she's right back into kapa haka-"One of the oldest ones performing down the back with Te Pikikoutuku o Rongomai (Ngati Pikiao). We got to the nationals in Christchurch in March, a really amazing experience. For kapa haka you've got to be really physically fit, it's a different kind of fitness to the sort I'm used to."
That fitness is of the athletic kind, Natalie's completed three half Ironmans in the Napier staged IronMaori, is tackling another next month; last weekend she chalked up 11 hours 8 minutes in the 50km Tarawera Trail.
"I ran with my best friend, we made it to the finish line half-an hour before the cut-off time so that was pretty satisfying."
She speculates she probably needs to do more cross-fitness. To our untrained eye Natalie looks super fit.
"Ah, but I can do better."
One of her commitments is to encourage more Maori to lace themselves into running shoes, she does this not only by example, but by involvement at committee level of Tau Te Maori Incorporated, an organisation dedicated to promoting health and wellbeing.
She helped her dad, Rukingi Richards, establish the Awhi Mai Stroke Support Group. Over recent months she's been closely involved with the return of war medals to her whaunau.
It all began with the chance discovery of a Victory Medal awarded posthumously to Pioneer Maori Battalion member, Sergeant Waretini Rukingi, her great-uncle, killed in action at Gallipoli. Since it was reunited with his descendants,a medal awarded to one of Waretini's two brothers who also fought at Gallipoli has come to light, Natalie has traced the third brother's to Defence Force HQ.
She's now on a mission to have it too back in whanau care.
She was in on the ground floor when the Te Koutu Community Action Group was formed.
"Kingi Biddle (Our People, August 25, 2012), we call him the mayor of Koutu, set it up after a gang fight on Koutu Rd, we make a point of staging positive events to bring people together.
"We held the Nia Glassie memorial on what would have been her 8th birthday; had candles, a cake. Her death happened in our community but the community had never properly acknowledged her."
Opposing a foreign-owned hotel development in Bennetts Rd is her latest campaign.
Despite living immediately opposite the proposed site, she hotly disputes our suggestion her involvement is motivated by NIMBYism (not in my backyard).
"If I'd wanted to live in a tourist street I'd have stayed in Ohinemutu or bought a house on Fenton St."
Doesn't her opposition clash with her awareness of tourism's importance to Rotorua?
"Not at all, I'm all good with hotels, my oldest son does concerts in them. What I do oppose is allowing one into an area zoned Residential 1.
"The council presumably gave this area the designation for a reason, I've looked at the Long Term Plan, there aren't any zoning changes scheduled for our area. What people need to understand is, if this resource consent's granted, if commercial interests are allowed to creep in, it sets a very dangerous precedent for all Rotorua suburbs."
We suggest Natalie ranks as one of the city's wahine toa (strong woman), but she won't buy it.
"What I love doing is empowering people, equipping them with the skills and ability to speak up for themselves, have faith in their own abilities . . . that's awesome."
NATALIE (PARE) RICHARDS - Born: Taupo, 1977. - Education: Waipahihi (Taupo), Ellerslie (while father training to be teacher) and Rotorua primaries, John Paul College. - Family: Husband Damian Hawe. Sons Dallas, 19, Maunganui, 11, Stevie, 5, "large extended whanau". - Iwi affiliations: Roro o Te Rangi (Te Arawa). - Interests: Whanau, running, biking, swimming, kapa haka, Maori culture, the Warriors "we're fanatical supporters, I have their logo tattooed somewhere on my body", graduate of three year Maori weaponry course. "I did it with my kids." - On living in Rotorua: "I'm not attracted to anywhere else in the world, I get really irked when people say there's nothing to do here." - Personal philosophy: "Make it happen-especially when I'm told I can't."
