Obituary Mrs Raukura Gillies

Press, 8 April 1989, Page 17

Obituary Mrs Raukura Gillies

] Mrs Raukura Ellen ? Gillies, known to generations of Ngal Tahu people •as Aunty Fan, has died, jaged 92. * Mrs Gillies lived most ‘of her life at Rapaki, on i Banks Peninsula, and was ‘ considered an expert on .the traditions and customs <of South Island Maori.

She was an expert •weaver, and an authority Jon South Island Whakapapa, or genealogies. ; She was a founding and -life member of the Maori 'Women’s Welfare League, • and was much involved in . the education and health

of Maoris. Born Raukura Ellen Tikao at Rapaki in 1896, she married Robert Tukeuwe Gillies, a farmer, soon after his return from World War I. Mr Gillies was of the Ngati Kahungunu of Hawke’s Bay. The wedding was arranged by the tribes and Mr and Mrs Gillies met for the first time two weeks before their wedding. After the wedding, the couple lived in Hawke’s Bay, and came to live in Rapaki when Mrs Gillies’s father died in 1927.

She worked as a midwife for many years in the Banks Peninsula area and in the Chatham Islands for up to three months a year.

A descendant of the Waitaha, Rapuwai, Hawea, and Ngati Mamoe Ngai Tahu of the south' Island, with connections to Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Porou and Te Ati Awa of the North Island, Mrs Gillies is survived by one daughter and three sons, and by 36 grandchildren and 19 greatgrandchildren.