The primary goal of this project is to enhance understanding of Māori legal traditions and the operation of Māori law.  The project asks: How do Māori communities create and change laws? How do Māori communities allocate legal rights and obligations? How do Māori communities resolve disputes and respond to breaches of their law? This project will focus on kōrero pūrākau (traditional stories) as a source of law and legal principle and will use the stories of Ngāti Kahungunu as the central case study.

Wānanga/Workshops

A vital component of this project will be two wānanga/workshops that will discuss important kōrero pūrākau of Ngāti Kahungunu. These wānanga will involve kaumatua and others from the Ngāti Kahungunu community who hold knowledge relating to the sources and application of tikanga and Māori legal traditions.  These wānanga are designed to be collaborative and aim to provide members of the Ngāti Kahungunu community with the legal tools to identify, from within their own stories, aspects of Māori legal traditions such as specific examples of the exercise of legal rights and obligations.

More information about these wānanga (to be held in 2016) will be made available on this site.