SISTERS-IN-ARMS

Dominicans worldwide are very much into women’s issues, Mary says. “Some years ago when it was a big topic, one of our sisters was very active in working with Filipino brides, another was working in women’s refuges. We are active in raising awareness of, and petitioning against, modern slavery. We speak out about the conditions of migrant workers here in New Zealand. Internationally, the Dominican order of both sisters and friars has a permanent social justice desk at the UN. Mary has taken a principled stance to her environment. “I was born in 1938 and moved five times before age four; therefore there was a sense of not knowing where you belong in the land. I have lived here at Teschemakers longer than I have lived anywhere else. In religious life, we kept moving. So, since the early 1990s, I have been able to claim the Waitaki River and Aoraki (Mt Cook) as my river and my mountain, but before then I didn’t have either. I didn’t have that sense of belonging. “And because I became attached to the Waitaki River, I helped organize a protest exhibition – Artists Against Aqua – at the Forrester Gallery in Oamaru in 2003, and put in a submission to the Environment Court opposing Project Aqua, the damming of the Waitaki. “There were several others with me including film-maker Bronwyn Judge and Anne Te Maiharoa-Dodds of Waitaha, and we made a submission together on the spirituality of the river – the right of the river to be a river feeding the people around it.”