A decade ago, Auckland woman Emma Frost discovered a stone outside her whare tupuna, inscribed with a dedication to her great-grandaunt, the suffragist and wāhine toa Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia. Intrigued, she investigated further.
Frost was familiar with the story of Kate Sheppard and her heroic efforts to win women the right to vote. But it seemed this woman, her tupuna, had gone several steps further. Mangakāhia fought not only for women’s suffrage, but also for women to govern. She and her husband, Hamiora, were integral figures in the Māori unity movement, Kotahitanga, and in 1893, she became the first woman to address the Kotahitanga parliament.
Frost, who is secretary of the Women’s Centre in Waitakere and president of her local branch of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, was blown…
