Rangituatahi Te Kanawa, pictured last week with Cindy Kiro (left).
It’s been a year in the making, but Rangituatahi Te Kanawa of Te Kūiti has been formally invested as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. The ceremony was held this month in Auckland with Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro. “In 2023 I had a lot of overseas travel and other commitments, so it was better to do the ceremony this year,” she told The News. The timing hadn’t felt especially important. “It’s just not me to want to have a lot of palaver about myself.” The honour was for services to Māori art and heritage preservation, and it was announced in the King’s Birthday and Coronation Honours. Te Kanawa said it had been nice to meet the other recipients, and she enjoyed mingling with them and their families. She wore a cloak woven by her mother, Diggeress Te Kanawa, among those gifted to all of her siblings at the turn of the century, when the younger Te Kanawa was in her forties. As a third generation weaver, Te Kanawa is a recognised exponent of raranga and whatu, the Māori art of weaving. Her passion and focus is the treatment and consolidation of degraded black fibres in Māori textiles. She does preventative conservation work on kākahu (cloaks) and whāriki (mats) in museum collections. She delivers workshops showing kaitiaki – the best practice for the long-term preservation of taonga in their care. The next two will be in Te Aroha and Rotorua, she said.
