Kua hinga te tōtara o Te Waonui-a-Tāne

Professor Ngapare Kaihina ‘Polly’ Hopa passes away at the age of 88

Tribute

By Co-Director and Associate Professor, Marama Muru-Lanning

6 April 2024

Professor Ngapare Kaihina ‘Polly’ Hopa passed away last week at the age of 88. She was an ardent supporter of the James Henare Research Centre.  

Professor Ngapare Hopa was from humble beginnings. She was born at Hukanui in the Waikato and has a whakapapa that connects her to Ngāti Wairere (Waikato) and Ngāti Tūwharetoa. She grew up in Gordonton and resided in the Hopa whānau homestead. Ngapare Hopa was educated at Gordonton School, Queen Victoria College, Epsom Girls Grammar, the University of Auckland and the University of Oxford. As a Māori woman, her pathway to academic achievement during the 1960s and 1970s was not easy or straightforward. Scholarships and glittering prizes were not strewn in front of her, rather she took the more difficult route of hard work and her own initiative. Ngapare Hopa completed her B.A. degree and a later diploma in social anthropology from Auckland while teaching. Her DPhil from Oxford came about by a chance conversation. On her OE in the mid-1960s, teaching in London, someone encouraged her to apply to Oxford, where she completed a research degree. In the mid-70s another year at Oxford saw her fulfilling residential requirements for the DPhil. This courage and commitment saw her become the first Māori woman ever to earn the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology), making her a true mana wahine and a role model. Ngapare Hopa’s PhD was on the topic of Māori political groupings whom she referred to as sodalities.

Professor Hopa held various academic positions over her career: in Māori Studies at the Department of Continuing Education at Auckland University, in Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton, where she taught for ten years and published work on North American Indian Communities. At the University of Waikato, where she became an Associate Professor, she was involved in research that led to the settlement of Waikato iwi’s Raupatu claim, as well as conducting a life histories study of Tainui kuia and ruruhi. In 1998 she took up the position of Chair in Māori Culture and Society and HOD of Māori Studies at Auckland University. Prior to retirement, Ngapare Hopa led a research programme at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa which importantly focussed on Māori adult literacy.

Professor Hopa was a renowned Māori scholar served her communities with dedication throughout her life, as a member of the Waitangi Tribunal, advising Creative New Zealand and Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, contributing to claims and critiquing policy and legislation affecting Māori and fostering te reo. She was a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2008. In the recent publication Ngā Kete Mātauranga: Māori Scholars at the Research Interface, Waikato University Professor Tahu Kukutai wrote “the first time I attended a lecture by Professor Ngapare Hopa – the first wahine Māori to gain a PhD. She commanded the lecture theatre. Her intellect. Her prose. Her poise. Her hair! Whaea Pare was my first academic crush”.

In 2021 Ngapare Hopa was awarded the Elsdon Best Medal for her life commitment to scholarship that uplifts Māori and Pacific peoples. She was loved by her whānau, friends and students and will be greatly missed. Paimarire