Ria Tikini

Ria Tikini or Ria Te Kini ( – 19 July 1919), also known as Mrs Chicken, was a New Zealand businesswoman, cultural informant and midwife. She is credited as one of the midwives who paved the way for the creation of the Plunket Society. As a Kāi Tahu and Kāti Mamoe woman, she was an informant for ethnographer William Anderson Taylor's work on Kāi Tahu history and early European contact with Māori.

Personal life Tikini was born around 1810 at Ruapuke Island. She was 17 at the time of Te Rauparaha's attacks on Kaiapoi, whether this referred to the initial raid in 1827 She was variously said to be 20 or a young woman in the early 1840s during the Wesleyan missions of Reverends Watkin and Creed at Old Waikouaiti.

Little is documented about her family, however Tikini had an elder sister. She married Tikini Paha She lived in a small wooden house below the railway line on the slope of the Puketeraki hill.

Tikini was tattooed in the tuhi style, "each side of her face being adorned with two straight lines and from mouth to ear". Taylor photographed her in 1907 wearing a large korowai, probably a family heirloom, along with a feather in a headscarf as a symbol of high status,

By 1913, Tikini's elder sister had died. The sister's land in Kaiapoi was in the name of her husband, but as he was not a member of that area, Tikini attempted to have the title amended in her own favour. Predeceased by her husband, she died in the house of her son Henare Parata on Saturday 19 July 1919. She was noted at the time as "probably the oldest inhabitant of the dominion". and in 2020, Plunket rebranded its logo to acknowledge its founding Māori midwives.