Youngest MP looks to ancestors to build new future

On her first day in New Zealand's parliament, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the country's youngest politician, made a beeline to a wall of photographs to seek an image of her ancestor - the first Māori minister to the crown.

- Eva Corlett

"I felt so relieved after seeing that picture," Maipi-Clarke told the Guardian. "[Parliament] house is very overwhelming for women, for Māori and especially for young people - there is a lot on the line for us. His photograph was a good sign - I said, you gotta have my back up in here." 

At just 21 years old, Maipi-Clarke became the youngest MP in 170 years to enter New Zealand's parliament in this month's national elections. In the process, she unseated Labour's Nanaia Mahuta, one of the country's most senior and respected MPs, who was the first Māori foreign affairs minister and had held the Hauraki-Waikato Māori electorate for 20 years.

But the novice Mäori party - or Te Pāti Māori - politician is no newcomer to politics: it is in her blood.

As well as Maipi-Clarke's greatgreat-great-great-grandfather Wiremu who was the first Mäori Katene minister to the crown in 1872-her aunt, Hana Te Hemara, was responsible for delivering a petition to parliament in 1972 calling for courses in Mäori language and culture to be offered in all New Zealand schools, and in 2018 her grandfather Taitimu Maipi made headlines for vandalising a statue of Capt John Hamilton - after whom the city of Hamilton was named - in protest against the Briton's colonial legacy and brutality towards Māori.