'The Kia Ora Lady' - Dame Naida Glavish publishes a memoir

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Dame Naida Glavish’s new book looks back at a life dedicated to the uplift of her people in areas like health and education.

Māpuna and Te Manu Korihi

10 November 2026

5 min read

Māpuna and Te Manu Korihi

10 November 2026

5 min read

Caption:Dame Naida Glavish.Photo credit:RNZ / Leigh-Marama McLachlan

Kahurangi Rangimārie Naida Glavish first shot to national prominence in 1984 while working at the Post Office telephone exchange in Helensville.

In Dame Naida's case she greeted you with a friendly 'kia ora.' Her supervisor instructed her to stop using te reo Maori. She refused, was demoted and the story was picked up by the media.

It stirred comment from then-Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon, and even the BBC did a story on it.

Now she has written The Kia Ora Lady with Lorraine McLeod, a book which looks back at that incident but also a life dedicated to the uplift of her people in areas like health and education.

Glavish told Māpuna her editor insisted the book be called The Kia Ora Lady, but she wanted it to be called 'The Privileged Life of a Servant'.

Dame Naida Glavish: The Kia Ora Lady

"It was my intent was to be a servant to the teachings of my grandmother," she said.

On the first page is the dedication 'For Māmā who taught me all I know.' 'Māmā' is Dame Naida's mother's mother, who raised her from birth.

"She named me Rangimārie because the storms happened in the rangi (sky) and in order to achieve mārie (peace) on earth you have to address the storms from the rangi. So my name really from her is 'the creator of peace' and I've done everything but."

It was her grandmother's whakataukī or saying that guided her later in life, 'Ina kite koe tētahi mea hē whakatikangia ina kore ka rite koe ki taua hē.'

"So with that whakataukī she massaged into me whenever I see something wrong in front of me I'm duty bound to correct it for if I do not then I will become like it."

Glavish said when her refusal to stop greeting callers with kia ora made headlines she couldn't understand why anyone would be opposed to it.

"It's from here, it's from Aotearoa, it's from this whenua, why would anybody be opposed to it other than they have racist inclinations."

About that time Glavish was on leave attending two tangi, the right to tangihanga leave had not been won at that time, still her supervisor agreed to the leave and she felt that her supervisor had understood her need to go to the tangihanga.

"Just I was about to climb the Harbour Bridge I thought to myself 'well, I'll back off.' I'll just back off with the kia ora because I was grateful to the supervisor.

"And as I thought that this voice in my ear came in and it went 'nui ake tēnei take i ā koe' (this is greater than you) and I thought it was the wind blowing in the window and so I wound the window up and as I got to the top of the bridge and the windows were up but the voice came back again."

With her grandmothers voice ringing in her ears Glavish thanked the supervisor for the time off but said she would not stop greeting callers with kia ora.

Glavish expected to be sacked and thought about returning to her marae Puatahi on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour to live off flounders and oysters, but instead she was demoted.

"Muldoon looked me right in the face and he goes 'I've been overseas deciding the economics of this country and I come back here and some girl wants to say kia ora, well far as I'm concerned she can say kia ora just so long as she don't say G'day Blue,' because the Australians had just served an underarm bowling or something that I didn't know anything about, and that's what signed off kia ora."

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