James’ parents Alma and Jack, both Australians, settled in Island Bay at 32 Medway Street. They came from a proud working-class background. Jack worked for Truby King making baby formula at the factory near the Karitane Hospital and Truby King House in Melrose, until he was made redundant during the depression of the 1930s. 

He bought a dairy at 121 The Parade. The directories in the early 1940s record Mrs Ritchie as the ‘confectioner’ at this address, selling ice-creams, sweets and the other familiar dairy goods. The family may have, for a time, lived at 121, which, like others in the block, had accommodation upstairs and out the back of the shop. All four children were born in Wellington: Ron (b.1924); Joan; Marie, and finally Jim on 12 Dec 1929.

The family was growing during the Depression times, and as with most at the time they lived off the garden by growing their veggies, making soap from lard, and making their own clothes. Jack and Alma would scrape up the manure  left behind by the horse-drawn carts  serving the neighborhood, to use on the garden.  The kids were all very embarrassed by this, but it was a common practice in those days of limited artificial fertilizer, a depression and horses still in widespread use. 

Primary School teacher 1948-1951. 

So why would someone who disliked school want to become a teacher?   His daughter Dr Jenny Ritchie explained that “he was very curious about people. His dad wanted him to get a trade but his mum stuck up for him.  Jack was focusing on being a good provider for the family and I guess with them the depression and lots of lots pf people without jobs it was very much in his mind. 

“Dad showed a lot of sensitivity, empathy and respect, but he could be very thought-provoking. He was one of these people that liked to rock the boat, and play Devil’s advocate. He used to say things that would get a reaction, and didn’t mind offending people, if it got them thinking. He had writing skills and a gift for the gab, was a complete orator and he could be a bit of a live wire”.

His passion for earning scout badges clearly shows that he loved learning and exploring. Perhaps he had ideas even then of alternative ways to teach. When finishing teachers’ college, he asked to be placed in a Māori school, and was sent to the East Coast rural community, where he began his own education about life in rural Māori communities. It was clear that the natural environment and education were part of the same thing. “The Māori view of the environment is anthropomorphic, but the natural world does not exist for humans, or for human purposes alone or even give those priority. It exists in its own being. The world is a person. It follows, therefore, that environmental respect is part of rangatiratanga, the respect system...You should respect the natural world as you would respect yourself, or your parents, or your elders and betters, or most of all your ancestral parents”. 

He asked lots of questions, having quickly discovered that rural Māori life was vastly different to what he had experienced in the city. “The impact Ngāti Porou made on my perceptions of the Māori world was profound. Here was culture with authenticity and depth, lived out in day-to-day activities”.  He had identified that he could not take on a culture not his own, but he needed to understand more about his own culture. After only a few years, he returned to university to study psychology and anthropology with Professor Ernest Beaglehole.  Thus began his lifetime of research, teaching, university influencing and innovating. While there he met and married Jane in 1956. Jane and James Ritchie became famous as advocates for children and their right to good parenting. They believed that parents should not be allowed, under law, to physically discipline their children. In their book Spare the rod (1981) and others they advocated positive affirmation for good behaviour, and time out and discussions for bad behaviour as better approaches.

It is, perhaps, not surprising that a pair of psychologists would write about children and parenting. But it was, and is, surprising that a Pākehā psychologist would be a negotiator and representative of the Waikato Tainui people in their Treaty claim. James Ritchie not only took part in negotiations but was the principal media spokesperson for the iwi. When challenged on this by then Prime Minister Jim Bolger in a Morning Report interview his response was blunt: ‘ask Tainui if I am speaking for them’. 

The first Māori King, Taawhiao, had predicted support would come from outside the tribes that supported him: "Teeraa anoo ooku nei hoa kei ngaa toopito o te ao, ko ngaa humeka, ko ngaa kaamura, ko ngaa parakimete, ko ngaa pekarohi." (My friends hail from the four corners of the world, they are the shoemakers, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, and the bakers). 

Robert Te Kotahi Mahuta of Tainui referenced this saying in the Introduction to James Ritchie’s book Being Bicultural: ‘He has become like a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith to us’. 

For his part, James Ritchie said of his involvement with Tainui: “I have had to learn to stand up to forthright, direct criticism and not to take offence; to enter into the emotional life of the tribe, not merely its policy and strategy discussions; to stay behind when the visitors have left and the real purposes emerge. Tainui has become for me a model of a modern tribe at work…[My]last giant stride into Tainui completed a long apprenticeship…I could see now the realities of tribal life: that it was not circumscribed by time and place, that culture was an ongoing, complex and varied matter, not just a straight line”. 

It’s a long way from Medway Street.