In the waiting place
“The smoke floats around her like a deadly nimbus; but the irony still pinches. That one thing that put her here is the one thing that gives her any remnant of her own life now.” — Māmari Stephens.
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Author: Māmari Stephens
Reading the signs on a journey into Māori law
“Up until my early 20s, Māori people and language had never really been normal at all to me. Māori concepts and ideas were not normal either, except in the most abstract and safe way.” — Māmari Stephens.
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Rāhui, mana, and Peter Ellis
Is it time to turn to Māori law for the answer to a legal issue that would affect all New Zealanders? — Māmari Stephens on the Peter Ellis case and the growing role and status of tikanga Māori in Aotearoa’s laws.
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A good death
“Those who cannot truly and freely choose should be protected by the state, not exposed to greater risk of death.”
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Standing still in the whirlwind
“We haven’t ‘lost our innocence’, as so many have said. We never had any.”
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The Empathy Gap and Me
“The Māori experience of colonisation, disease, war, urbanisation and deprivation within this country is unique to Māori.”
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Papatūānuku, Pan, and a lonely kid in Christchurch
Papatūānuku has been an emblem of political identity and cultural survival for Māori.
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Why is God and sexuality so bloody difficult?
“Christianity is a religion of failures and dropkicks, hypocrites and losers, because most of us are goodish, but not one of us is good enough. We all know this regardless of belief, right?”
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Māmari Stephens: I never saw any narrative of Māori life until I was an adult
“It took years of very conscious effort for me not to be afraid to walk into a room full of people darker than I was.”
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Māmari Stephens: The long shadow over our marae
Our marae need attention, protection, words and warmth, writes Māmari Stephens in this essay...
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Māmari Stephens: Just what are we really commemorating with Rā Maumahara?
I remember a few more over the last couple of decades in Wellington as attendance at such...
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The Crown isn’t just Pākehā. It is also Māori.
Symbols come in many forms, tangible and the intangible. They tell us stories we may not even be...
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Turning the tap off? Righting water wrongs
One of the things I’m really enjoying about this election season is how many cats are being...
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Bad laws sometimes deserve breaking
In the opening moments of the 1970s, my father left my mother and followed his elusive business...
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And there he lies, ever, ever, the manuhiri
Our father died in 2012. He’d been living in Australia for about 42 years and had only rarely...
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Māmari Stephens: What some bloody awful cartoons can tell us about ourselves
I don’t get personally offended easily. I learned a while ago not to buy too much into the...
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Max Harris – a visionary worth following
Max Harris is a good bloke who has written a book. He doesn’t need me to repeat all his...
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Māmari Stephens: What about a welfare system that doesn’t judge need?
A couple of weeks ago, on a Lower Hutt street, a woman and her children decided to do something...
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Māmari Stephens: Kaupapa Māori and the war on words
I am no political pundit. I have no great insight into Māori politics on the national or local...
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Māmari Stephens: Can we learn from what’s happened in Trump-land?
I remember waking up one morning last year, lying awake for a moment, feeling warm, contented and...
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An attack of the guilts? Yeah, nah
There has been a lot said lately about people of privilege behaving badly. You remember. There...
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The only Māori in the room
I had one of those “only Māori in the room” moments recently. I have a lot of those....
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Will Tūhoe provide the welfare model?
There’s all this doom and gloom in world news these days. Fear and fearmongering too. From the...
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The Kermadecs – what does the government not understand about ‘consult with iwi’?
I imagine John Key must have had a lovely warm feeling as he announced before the world (well, the...
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If we ban the Bible from schools, will karakia be next?
Karakia are cultural practices, but are they religious as well? Or just spiritual? And how exactly...
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Mike Hosking’s Tribunal Tribulations
My brief this week was to write a column on the Waitangi Tribunal. Now, I often need to feel a bit...
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We need to hear Māori and Pacific voices on the euthanasia debate
There is a tin. It looks like Nana’s biscuit tin, but is actually the tin from which private...
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Waitangi and the virtue of uncertainty
It’s never very far from my memory. The time, in 1988, I took a taxi to Jupiter’s Casino on...
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How can the Mormons justify this?
When I converted to Christianity about 15 years ago, my dear, late mother was not impressed. She...
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A Taniwha by the Tail
I heard the news yesterday and my heart gave a leap. In fact, I think it must have levitated a...
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