‘Wahine toa’ published The Bone People
Publisher/public servant b Feb 19, 1944 d August 15, 2018
Miriama Evans, who has died aged 74, earned the title ‘‘wahine toa’’, or strong woman, for a lifetime spent battling for the interests of Ma¯ ori. She worked all her life for te ao Ma¯ ori in the public service and the arts.
Evans was part of a collective which published an unusual manuscript that would go on to receive one of the highest literary honours – the Booker Prize.
The prize was awarded in London in 1985 to an unknown writer, Keri Hulme, and an unknown publisher, the Spiral Collective, for The Bone People.
The book had been turned down by every publisher in Australasia and yet this young group of women picked it up and not only published it but won the highest prize for fiction for books published in English.
Evans missed her own graduation from Victoria University to collect the Booker Prize on behalf of its author in London. Hulme responded to news of Evans’ death by saying there was a ‘‘gap in the world now’’.
The Spiral Collective, established by Miriama Evans, Irihapeti Ramsden and Marian Evans, would go on to publish J C Sturm’s The House of the Talking Cat, which was short-listed for the New Zealand Book Awards.
In an article for Landfall, Evans wrote that it was a ‘‘matter of political urgency that written Ma¯ ori literature in both English and Ma¯ ori should, in accordance with Ma¯ ori concept, emerge into the world of light’’.
Miriama Evans was born in Christchurch in 1944, the first child of a Nga¯ ti Mutunga father and a Nga¯ i Tahu mother. She went to Linwood High School where she was the only Ma¯ ori girl for a long period, and one of only four Ma¯ ori students in a roll of more than 1000.
She was a high achiever, top of the class academically and in sports. She won school talent quests as a singer and was made head girl in her final year.
She took a position as a travel officer at the Government Tourist Bureau but quit after marrying high school sweetheart Andy Evans and starting a family.
Andy had admired her from afar all through high school but they were never in the same class until their last year when they were both 17. They soon became inseparable. But their love story was not straightforward. His parents did not approve of a Ma¯ ori girlfriend and told him in blunt terms to end the relationship. But the couple knew what they were about. They wouldn’t be torn apart.
Eventually, his parents were won over and became deeply fond and proud of their beautiful Ma¯ ori daughter-in-law.
When her two sons were still preschoolers, the family moved to Wellington, where she enrolled in Victoria University’s Ma¯ ori Studies Department. The first in her family to go to university, Evans graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours.
With a new baby girl in the family, she continued her academic journey, becoming a tutor at the university. These were the beginnings of a relationship with Victoria that would include two terms on the University Council and would continue for the rest of her life.
Shortly after her publishing successes, she became head of the Ma¯ ori Women’s branch of the newly-established Ministry of Women’s Affairs. She went on to carve out a career in the public service working at the Ministry of Justice, Te Puni Kokiri, and finally the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. During her time in government she worked with four prime ministers – Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark and John Key.
During her long career in the public service, she was regarded as someone who could get difficult things done without a fuss. She sought nothing except progress for Ma¯ ori people and communities.
Retirement in 2005 meant more time for her growing wha¯ nau and her iwi. She took part in the Treaty claim settlement and became a trustee in the Nga¯ ti Mutunga Authority and a member of the pan-Ma¯ ori Iwi Leaders and Taranaki Iwi Leaders Forums.
The following year, in 2006, Evans and her sister Ra¯ nui Ngarimu, who had been working on projects to encourage and strengthen weaving and other traditional arts in their iwi, produced a book based on an exhibition of Ma¯ ori weaving at Pa¯ taka Museum in Porirua. The Art of Ma¯ ori Weaving, published by Huia, was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards.
After Evans retired from the public service, she returned to the university on contract to Te Kawa a Ma¯ ui, teaching about policy development in Government and how this impacts on Ma¯ ori society.
She was appointed to the Waitangi Tribunal in 2013 and took on the role of national Ma¯ ori adviser with the Order of St John that same year.
In 2016 she was awarded the Hunter Fellowship by Victoria University for her commitment to Ma¯ ori development at the university.
It was around this time Evans became ill. Treatments limited her ability to continue with her work and she reluctantly shed her roles – except for the Ma¯ ori advisory committee at Victoria, where she attended two meetings a week. – By Bess Manson