Ngaropi Cameron

Ngaropi is the mother of five children and grandmother to nine mokopuna. She is also a registered general and obstetric nurse and a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors. She is an active iwi member who has worked in the health and social justice sectors for more than forty years. Ngaropi has held several positions, including foundation member and director of Tū Tama Wahine o Taranaki. She has been a researcher and senior whānau violence programmefacilitator and educator, and an ACC-approved Māori sexual abuse counsellor.

Ngaropi has undertaken community-based research through the Health Research Council
of New Zealand, Te Rau Matatini and the Department of Internal Affairs. She is a former member of the Ministry of Justice Domestic Violence Programme Approvals Panel, the Māori Reference Group to the National Taskforce on Family Violence, the Family Violence Death Review Committee, the Jigsaw Executive Board and the Taranaki DHB Family
Violence Expert Panel, and a member of Te Rōpū – the interim Māori advisory group for the Government’s joint venture on family violence and sexual violence.

In 2001, Ngaropi received an excellence in nursing award from the Nursing Network of Violence Against Women International. She is co-author of He Waipuna Koropupū: Taranaki Māori Wellbeing and Suicide Prevention; He Mokopuna He Tupuna: Investigating Māori Views of Childrearing amongst Iwi in Taranaki; Te Ara Ririki: Pathways to Healing in Taranaki; and contributed the chapter ‘Kua Tupu Te Pā Harakeke: Developing Healthy Whānau Relationships’ to For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook.
Ngaropi is also a contributing author to ‘Investigating Māori Approaches to Trauma: Informed Care, Māori Cultural Definitions of Sexual Violence, Historical Trauma and Whānau Violence’, in the 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Clearing House Issues: Paper 15, and co-author of ‘Whāia Te Ara Ora: Understanding and Healing the Impact
of Historical Trauma and Sexual Violence for Māori’ in the same publication.

Don’t forget about the history that has been made by our tūpuna.
They made commitments for our survival. Messages for the future are
contained in our past – we need to recognise and remember them.