Te ao ō te Māori: a window into the rich lifestyles of contemporary Māori

Te ao ō te Māori: a window into the rich lifestyles of contemporary Māori
Photographs and words nā PHIL TUMATAROA


If you had asked Wendy Heath a few years ago what she envisaged
for her future, being an ordained Māori Anglican priest wouldn’t
have been on the list.

“I never saw this coming,” she says with a wry smile. “I went back
to church because I just felt the need to go back, but it was just to go
back to church, not to actually become clergy.”

Now every second Sunday the Reverend Wendy (Kāi Tahu) can be
found holding service at Te Tokotoru Tapu Te Hahi Mihinare, Holy
Trinity Anglican Church, in Arowhenua, which was re-consecrated
on October 19 2023 – the same day she was made a priest.
“That was a big day, and at that time I had taken one service,”
she says.


Her ascension within the church has happened more quickly
than most, beginning with an invitation in 2021 from The Venerable
Mere Wallace to be a kaikarakia.

“So, when she came down to do a service, she put a prayer book
in my hand and said, read this karakia,” Wendy recalls.

A year later Wendy was raised to the diaconate to become a
deacon; six months later she was ordained as a priest.
“Richard [Bishop Richard Wallace] needed a priest for this church;
it was being repaired to re-establish a congregation here – and
I think he saw me as the right person to be here.”

Wendy and her husband Tewera King, Upokorūnanga o
Arowhenua, are intimately connected with the affairs of Arowhenua
Marae, just a few hundred metres down the road from the church

“I think he saw the synergy of Tewera and I being here, the fact
that I’ve been part of the marae for over 15 years, and I’m always
there for tangihanga so the whānau know me.“ 

Wendy describes herself as a “confirmed
Anglican, brought up in the church” and was a
member of the choir for many years as a child.

She says returning to it feels like coming home.

“When I walked through the doors I thought
my legs might go out from under me – it was like –
I’m home, this is where I belong, why have I been
an idiot for so long? I was looking for something
and here it was all the time.”

As well as her role as kaikaranga on the marae,
Wendy is actively involved in St Augustine’s
Anglican Church and its community in Waimate
where she lives. She takes services, conducts
funerals and is a member of the vestry.