13 Facts About Evelyn Stokes

Dame Evelyn Mary Stokes was a professor of geography at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and a member of the New Zealand government's Waitangi Tribunal.

Evelyn Stokes was educated at Tauranga Primary School and Tauranga College, where she was one of the first non-Maori to join the local kapa haka group.

Evelyn Stokes then went to Canterbury University College, earning a master's degree with first class honours in geography in 1959.

Evelyn Stokes was appointed to a lecturership with the University of Auckland, and taught for a year for their Waikato branch before becoming a member of the geography department at Waikato University when that university was founded in 1964.

Evelyn Stokes was founding editor of the New Zealand Journal of Geography, which she formed from what was previously a pamphlet, the New Zealand Geographical Society Record, and for 10 years she served as its editor.

Evelyn Stokes published a series of 20 papers aimed at the curricular needs for this level in both the New Zealand Journal of Geography and the New Zealand Geographer, and served from 1976 to 1987 as a member of New Zealand's National Geography Curriculum Committee.

Evelyn Stokes played an important part in building up the map collection of the University of Waikato: in 1964 she and Michael Selby transferred the New Zealand Geographic Society's collection to Waikato, she was the society's map librarian from 1966 to 1983, and she frequently added to the library with purchases from her travels abroad.

Evelyn Stokes worked closely with two other Maori tribes, the Ngati Tuwharetoa and the Ngati Haua, whose chief Wiremu Tamihana was the subject of a major biography published by Stokes.

For nearly 16 years, Evelyn Stokes served as a member of the Waitangi Tribunal, the New Zealand government commission that adjudicates Maori land claims with respect to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Evelyn Stokes served as well for many years on the New Zealand Geographic Board, the body charged with assigning official place names in New Zealand.

Evelyn Stokes was the last woman in New Zealand to be made a Dame before that title was replaced by "Distinguished Companion" in 2001, until damehoods were reintroduced in 2009.

On her death, Evelyn Stokes was honoured with a tangi, a formal three-day Maori funeral ceremony, on Te Kohinga Marama marae.

In 2017, Evelyn Stokes was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Aparangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.