“You must be mad to even think of going there!” was the main opinion expressed to the Presbyterian deaconess, Sister Annie Henry, when she and her colleague, Abigail Monfries, arrived to staff the newly opened school at Ruatāhuna in the heart of Te Urewera in 1917. Mere months had passed since the violent arrest of the Tūhoe prophet, Rua Kenana, in nearby Maungapōhatu. Two people, including one of Rua’s sons, had been killed in the incident and the whole district was on edge.

This was no place for two respectable, godly, Pākehā women. They might have been even more shocked to see the conditions that they were going to - living in an earth-floored whare in a settlement initially accessible only by foot or on horseback.

Yet Sister Annie Henry remained in Ruatāhuna for 31 years. She nursed people through the 1918 influenza pandemic, delivered babies, visited whānau, taught, adopted two Māori children and even undertook emergency dentistry and plumbing. When she died at the age of 92, she was brought back to be buried at Ruatāhuna, among the community she had known.

Annie Henry was one of many women working in the Presbyterian Māori Missions, mainly in Te Urewera and the Bay of Plenty, and mostly among Tūhoe. The Presbyterian Church in New Zealand had mostly been a “Settler Church” and had never had the same level of early mission work among Māori as other denominations. Although there were a handful of Presbyterian missionaries working among Māori in the 19th Century they were never well supported by the Church. When Presbyterian interest in Māori Missions began to increase in the early 20th century, it proved difficult to recruit men to this mission field. The locations were remote and difficult to access, while living conditions were often incredibly basic. Often those with a missionary bent were attracted to the more exotic foreign missions in China, India or the New Hebrides [Vanuatu].

To overcome this staffing deficit, the Presbyterian Church decided to experiment with employing women. It was not unusual to employ women in the foreign mission field and in 1904 the Presbyterian Women’s Training Institute had been established in Dunedin to train deaconesses to work within the New Zealand Church. Women also had the advantage of having to be paid less. The salary of a deaconess was only roughly one third that of a male missionary.

In 1907 Jane Spence (Sister Alison) and Emare Poraumati became the first deaconesses to begin work in the Māori Missions. Despite initial personality clashes with Rev Henry Fletcher whom she was to work under, Sister Alison’s ministry was very successful and she worked in the Māori Missions for the next 30 years. Emare Poraumati (one of only a very small number of Māori deaconesses) worked tirelessly, particularly in caring for the sick and trying to provide food assistance. Worn down, she retired in 1909 due to poor health.

These women were followed by many others and for the first half of the 20th century, women made up the majority of the staff of the Presbyterian Māori Missions. They were involved in teaching, nursing, leading worship and providing pastoral support to whānau, at times also attempting to advocate for their communities with the Church or with government. The majority of mission stations were founded, led and staffed by women, with much of their financial support coming from money that was raised through the fundraising efforts of the PWMU (Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union).

Following WW2, the number of women working within the Māori Missions declined, as increasing control passed to Māori communities. However the early 20th century Māori Missions remain the period of Ngā Hehita – the time of the Sisters.

The important role of the Presbyterian deaconesses has been recognised by the inclusion of the Presbyterian Research Centre’s Deaconess Collection on the list of the UNESCO Memory of the World for New Zealand.