Heather Came-Friar

Heather Anne Came-Friar is a New Zealand activist, academic and anti-racism scholar, and is an adjunct professor at Victoria University of Wellington, and an anti-racism consultant. In 2023 Came-Friar was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori, education and health.

Early life and education
Came-Friar is a seventh-generation Pākehā New Zealander. Came-Friar completed a Master of Political Science degree at the University of Canterbury, after which she became interested in public health. She earned a Certificate in Health Promotion from the University of Otago in Wellington, through distance learning. She then followed this with a PhD titled Institutional Racism and the Dynamics of Privilege in Public Health at the University of Waikato.

Career
Came-Friar joined the faculty of the Auckland University of Technology, rising to associate professor in 2022. In 2023 she was appointed as an adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health at Victoria University of Wellington. Came conducts critical policy analysis research and activism aimed at social and racial justice, and she has campaigned for recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi. In 2013 Came-Friar founded the group STIR: Stop Institutional Racism, of which she became co-chair. In 2020 she founded a series of virtual anti-racism and decolonisation gatherings called Te Tiriti based futures + Anti racism (Decol).

Honours and awards
In the New Years Honours of 2023 Came was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori, education and health.

In 2021 Came-Friar jointly won the Public Health Association's Kāhui Hauora Tūmatanui Public Health Champion Award.