Kaikohe Girl's Work with Eskimos

Te Ao Hou, September 1962, Page 15

Miss Iri Rangi Rankin Kaikohe Girl's Work with Eskimos A globe-trotting nurse, whose career has ranged from welfare work among the Eskimos of the Arctic Circle to pen-pushing for Lloyds of London, has finally settled down—as a Maori welfare worker. She is Kaikohe's Miss Iri Rangi Rankin, who has recently taken up an appointment as welfare officer with the Maori Affairs Department at Thames. Trained as a nurse at Waikato and Rotorua hospitals, Miss Rankin was supervising sister at Wellington Public Hospital when she left New Zealand in 1955 to further her experience in Canada. She worked as a nurse with a government-run hospital outpost at Moose Factory, an island in James Bay, 1000 miles north of Toronto. ‘I'd always heard that Indians and Maoris were a similar people, but I could not find any racial similarities at all,’ she said. ‘We seem to be two quite different races.’