Hera Stirling
Sarah Mary Catherine Stirling, known as Hera Stirling and, after her marriage, as Hera Munro, was a New Zealand Māori activist, suffragist, and missionary of Ngāi Tahu descent.
Early life
Born as Sarah Mary Catherine Stirling in 1876 in Riverton, Southland, she became an evangelist in the Salvation Army and trained as an officer in Wellington. She went with a troop of Salvation Army singers to Australia in 1895 and returned two more times. She married Himeperi "Humphrey" Te Wharekauri Munro, an Anglican minister at Pakipaki, in the Napier Cathedral on 2 November 1910. She thereafter used his surname. They were the parents of Capt. Pango Stirling Munro, 2nd Maori Battalion of the New Zealand Infantry.Temperance leadership
At the start of the twentieth century, Stirling worked with many different Māori iwis to establish local chapters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand in Wanganui, New Zealand. In March 1905 she formed the Pūtiki Maori Christian Temperance Union with Mrs. R. Davis elected president, Hena Stirling as secretary, Mark Peneaha as treasurer, and Matthew Patopu assistant secretary. She continued to sing evangelist songs to public audiences, for example at the WCTU NZ convention in 1905 at Wanganui.With the support of WCTU NZ presidents Lily Atkinson and Fanny Cole, Stirling served as a national organizer of the Māori chapters of the WCTU NZ whilst teaching bible classes and working as a secretary for the Pūtiki WCTU NZ. Stirling founded in 1908 a branch at Tuahiwi, north of Kaiapoi ; and, in 1910 she organised a branch in Te Hauke, south of Hastings. In 1911, she organised the first national convention for the Māori unions of the WCTU NZ; it was held just outside of Hastings in the town of Pakipaki, where each of the Māori branches gathered. At this convention, the delegates of the seven unions present formed a Union District, with Stirling elected as president and Matehaere Ripeka Brown Halbert as Vice President.
In 1922, Stirling became the first woman elected to a synod in the Anglican Diocese of Waiapu.