When it comes to naming women who have shaped New Zealand, Kaiora Tipene isn’t short of inspiration.
“The first wahine that comes to mind is Dame Whina Cooper,” says mum-of-five Kaiora, who with her husband Francis has charmed and educated Kiwis since 2018 while removing the taboo of death with their reality TV series The Casketeers.
Kuia Dame Whina worked tirelessly to improve the lot of Māori women and also led the 1975 land march from Te Hāpua in the Far North to Wellington.
“Then,” adds Kaiora, 39, “there is Dame Naida Glavish, who helped to shape te reo Māori.” Politician and community leader Dame Naida was a telephone exchange operator in 1984 when she was told to stop greeting callers with the phrase “kia ora”. Instead of backing down, she doubled down and won widespread public support at a time when the revitalisation of te reo Māori was just beginning.
Last but not least on Kaiora’s list is former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
“She helped people like my dad to have dialysis machines in their homes,” explains Kaiora, who grew up in Northland. “Back then, you had to travel from Kaitaia to Whāngarei three days a week to get dialysis treatment. My parents went to [then opposition leader] Helen Clark in the hope that she could do something to help them and she did. Because of that, I have always admired her. She was a voice for us at a time when we needed it.”
Together with her husband, Kaiora has built up a successful funeral business in Auckland, where they provide culturally diverse funeral services with compassion, empathy, care and respect.
But Kaiora says she never dreamed as a teenager that she would achieve such things. “I didn’t believe at the time that whatever I wanted to be, I could be,” she tells. “If I could tell my 16-year-old self anything, it would be, ‘The world really is your oyster.'”
The biggest hurdle for Kiwi women today, she believes, is equality.
“In certain places of society today, women are still looked down on and it’s almost like we have to fight for a voice. Maybe it’s the wahine in me. When I know there’s something that needs to be said, even if my husband is holding my hand to refrain me,I will say it.”
Kaiora loves appearing in the Weekly and says the magazine was a mainstay in her house growing up. “There were times we couldn’t afford it, but my mum loved doing the crosswords and reading up on local people. We would have a stack of magazines in our lounge and she’d be really upset if Dad tried to move it!”
