Gabrielle Rikihana

Gabrielle Mary Rikihana (21 January 1927 – 2 March 2025) is a New Zealand teacher and community leader. In 2020 she was awarded the Sir Kingi Ihaka Award, which recognises a lifetime contribution.

Academic career

Rikihana is Māori, and affiliates to Ngāti Raukawa. She then travelled to England for the Coronation, spending two years there. Before she returned to New Zealand in 1955, Rikihana wrote a radio play for the BBC Home Service called Life in a Maori Village.

Rikihana completed a Master's degree with a thesis titled Invariance: a study of some conserving behaviours in young children in 1972 at Massey University.

After taking the option of retirement at the age of sixty (after 40 years of government service) as a teacher and later Inspector for the Ministry of Education in Hamilton, she was persuaded to become involved at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. During the tribunal hearings, she described the land lost to her hapu “We have virtually no land of commercial value. Alongside Ngāti Pareraukawa and Ngāti Hikitanga, we are the most landless hapū of the inquiry district. We hold only the shadow of the land." The hapu are claiming for the return of the old Ōtaki maternity hospital and surrounding land.