Matiu Rātana
New Zealand politician
Matiu Rātana (16 December 1912 – 7 October 1949), son of Tahupotiki Wiremu Rātana, was a New Zealand politician and president of the Rātana Church.
Political career
A son of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana, the founder of the Rātana religion, Matiu Rātana was a younger brother to Haami Tokouru Rātana, whom he succeeded to the Church Presidency, and to the Western Maori electorate (from 10 February 1945, after a by-election) after his brother's death in 1944.
Matiu Rātana died on 7 October 1949 in Wanganui Hospital after a car accident. He was succeeded by his wife Iriaka Rātana as MP. She was the first female Māori MP.
Sources
Henderson, James Mcleod (1963). Ratana The Man, The Church, The Movement (1st ed.) A.H & A.W. Reed Ltd ISBN 0-589-00619-3.
“Matiu Rātana” enters the record as new Zealand politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Matiu, Rātana and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Matiu Rātana” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Matiu, Rātana and Zealand provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6787615. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1949, 1945 and 1944.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Matiu Rātana”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Matiu Rātana primary sources, Matiu Rātana archive and Matiu research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Matiu Rātana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.