Criminal justice lawyer Kīngi Snelgar recently stepped away from his usual work — exhausted and on the verge of burnout.

Here, he writes about healing and why the work of wairuatanga is vital for our national wellbeing.

 

Tino rangatiratanga means self-determination, the ability to shape our own affairs and to live in alignment with our values and whakapapa. It’s often described as the foundation of Māori rights, protected in Article Two of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Yet what is often overlooked in discussion about tino rangatiratanga is the self — the inner act of determining.

When I began to think about that idea, I realised that before we can determine collectively, we must first take charge of our own destiny. The journey to tino rangatiratanga begins inside each of us, a journey of healing that restores balance and potential

From a young age, I could see and feel the unseen currents of wairua that move through all things, the quiet presence that sits beneath the surface of life.

But as I grew older, that awareness became harder to hold. The world around me didn’t always make space for the spiritual, and sometimes saw spiritual expression as illness. Suppression of spirituality and our traditional practices is what the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 was designed to do.

Like many of us, I learned to numb my sensitivity through alcohol and distraction. For years, I spoke about mauri as a concept, yet I had never truly felt its flow within me. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking and returned to stillness that I began to experience what our tūpuna meant when they spoke of wairua as a living force.

In that reconnection, I felt a presence that words can barely describe, as though something ancient within me was remembering itself and awakening. My childhood memories of spiritual visitors came back. I understood then that our connection to wairua is not a metaphor but a direct source of healing and wellbeing.

To feel mauri is to feel divine essence, to know that we descend from atua and carry their spark within each of us. It has unlimited potential. That realisation transformed everything: my sense of identity, my purpose, and my understanding of tino rangatiratanga.

Healing, I realised, is not only recovery from pain. It is the awakening of our original state of being as whole, sacred, and connected.

Last year, as exhaustion set in from years within the justice system, that truth called me back.

I’d spent so long fighting for others that I had neglected my wellbeing. Sitting alone one night after court, I felt that disconnection from wairua was the real source of my fatigue. To heal myself — and to help others heal — I needed to restore that connection first.

I realised that I couldn’t chart a future for myself if my inner world remained fractured. The same is true for the collective. If we are to become truly self-determining, we must address our disconnection and the burden of intergenerational trauma. We must remember to govern our own realms of wairua, hinengaro, and mauri before we can truly uplift our whānau, hapū, and iwi. Leadership, at its deepest level, begins with wellbeing.

At its heart, tino rangatiratanga is not only political autonomy or institutional power — it is the restoration of wairua.

The word itself carries that truth: ranga means to weave and tira means a group or a light. To exercise rangatiratanga is to weave the collective spirit, bringing people together through purpose and the unseen threads that bind us.

When we forget the wairua within tino rangatiratanga, we risk turning it into a struggle of structures rather than a living mauri.

Our ancestors understood that authority flows from balance between the seen and unseen. The health of a people was never measured only by land or resources, but by the vitality of their spirit, the clarity of their relationships, and the strength of their mauri.

Tino rangatiratanga is not merely independence from external control. It is interdependence with the divine, with our atua, the taiao, and the lines of whakapapa that connect all things.

To reclaim tino rangatiratanga is to reclaim the sacred within ourselves and our communities. Every decision, every act of governance, must also be an act of wairuatanga, our spiritual essence and connection to the divine. When our wairua is grounded, we can lead with clarity and humility. When it’s not, we risk leading from ego and disconnection.

My healing began the moment I stopped searching outside myself and started listening inward, to the quiet voice of wairua.

Each day, I returned to karakia, meditation and breath, feeling the rhythm of life moving through me. I spent time on the whenua of my ancestors, placing my hands in the soil and trees to feel their mauri, and I connected with them through vibration and heat.

In that stillness, I began to sense the flow of mauri again, not as an idea but as a feeling within the body. I came to understand that wairua is not abstract, but rather a living current that reconnects us to our source.

When I honoured that connection through rest, reflection, and rongoā, I felt my spirit reawaken. The healing wasn’t about fixing pain, but remembering my wholeness and remembering that, as uri or descendants of atua, we carry within us the same creative light that shaped the world.

Healing is political and spiritual work, a quiet form of resistance against systems that once sought to fragment us.

Across the motu, I see whānau and iwi leading this quiet revolution through kaupapa like rongoā clinics on marae, wānanga on whakapapa, or community gardens that reconnect people to whenua. These acts of care are forms of governance too, restoring balance where policy alone cannot.

Healing is the soil from which self-determination grows. Without it, tino rangatiratanga risks becoming an external contest fought in courts and parliament, disconnected from the deeper sovereignty that lives within each of us.

It’s also how we call back those who are lost or searching, like the many I have represented in the criminal justice system.

At the recent Mokopuna Ora Conference held by Waikato-Tainui, I saw this healing in practice. Iwi and hapū are reclaiming the care of their tamariki, breaking cycles that have too often led from state care to incarceration. The kōrero there reaffirmed that healing comes from returning to tikanga and rebuilding systems that nurture the mauri of every child. When we care for our mokopuna in this way, we shape not only their futures but the next seven generations.

During my season of renewal, I found connection in many traditions that echoed the truths of te ao Māori and saw how connected we all are. In Buddhist teachings, I recognised the same insight that our tīpuna carried: that separation is an illusion and that all things arise from a single, connected source.

The idea of oneness, of awakening to our shared essence, mirrored what I was rediscovering through wairua. It reminded me that to heal is to return to whakapapa, to the web that binds atua, ancestors, and ourselves in one continuum of light.

When I understood this, the boundaries between cultures, religion, doctrines, and identities softened. I realised that wairua is the meeting point of all wisdoms, the thread that weaves humanity back to the divine.

Wairua is what allows us to see each other not as opponents in a struggle, but as kin remembering the same truth: that we are all part of a single mauri flowing from source. Some will remember this more than others.

In all my years in the youth and district courts, I never met a client untouched by trauma. Most carry threads of sexual abuse, poverty, domestic violence, or removal from whānau. It’s well-known that wounded people often hurt others or themselves. I see it in addiction, in crime, and in the quiet self-blame that erodes the spirit.

The justice system speaks about accountability and rehabilitation, yet rarely about healing. That silence, to me, is one of the great crises of our time.

I’ve seen glimpses of what true justice could look like in restorative hui where offenders face the people they’ve harmed, guided by kaumātua and karakia. In those moments, accountability becomes aroha, and people remember who they are beyond their mistakes.

Our courts can restore order, but rarely restore mauri. True justice asks not only what rule was broken, but what pain was never healed. When the wairua of the people remains wounded, punishment alone cannot bring balance.

Sir Peter Gluckman’s research reminds us that up to 90 percent of those in prison have a diagnosable mental health or substance use disorder, and most have experienced trauma as children. These statistics aren’t telling us about evil people, but about those with untreated pain.

Healing can’t remain at the margins — it must become a collective priority. Healing is not only physical recovery but a spiritual return, a reconnection to whakapapa and to mana.

Once I reconnected to that truth myself, I realised how well supported I was and how many forms of rongoā exist in both te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā. My greatest transformation came when I began to believe in my own tapu — not from ego, but from knowing that every person is divine.

I now see this need for healing everywhere — in politics and in society, and in the exhaustion that pervades our systems. As Moana Jackson once said: “We once were gardeners.” To heal is to remember how to tend the soil of our collective being, so that all who come after us may grow in balance and light.

Healing can take many forms: kōrero, karakia, rongoā, tāmoko, mirimiri, te reo, kapa haka, laughter, prayer, or simply time in nature. Te whare tapa whā (developed by Mason Durie, a rangatira in psychiatry and academia), teaches that wellbeing rests on four walls — wairua, tinana, hinengaro, and whānau. When one weakens, the whole whare feels it.

For me, living in right relationship with wairua now shapes everything I do.

I begin and end my day with karakia. I see my children as energetic sponges who need my guidance as a parent. And I see and hold space for others around me as they remember their sacredness.

The karakia that starts my day asks that whatever unfolds be guided by light. I carry taonga not as protection from others, but as reminders of the sacred responsibility of service.

When I forget and become overwhelmed, I return to the whenua or to wai, letting them cleanse what I’ve absorbed. I feel their healing abilities as they take away the heaviness and help ground me in the present.

These are small acts, yet they keep me aligned. And I’ve seen the same transformation in others with small acts. When a young person reconnects with their pepeha, or when a whānau begins to heal. Healing begins to ripple outward, changing everything it touches.

There are glimpses of this holistic approach in kaupapa like the rongoā Māori services that are now recognised by ACC. Many iwi and hapū organisations weave social services with cultural and spiritual wellbeing. Waikato-Tainui’s Mokopuna Ora, Ngāpuhi Social Services, and the kaupapa of Mana Inc are proof that when tikanga leads, transformation follows.

Western frameworks such as trauma-informed practice and restorative justice are also moving in this direction. When restorative justice is done well, it restores mana and wairua, acknowledging that when harm occurs, both victim and offender are affected, and that the healing of one cannot happen without the other.

Collective healing is the next frontier. Within iwi and hapū, we often focus on commercial growth and governance. These are important, but imagine if every iwi board began each meeting by asking: “How do we help our people heal?”

If we measured success not by balance sheets but by balance restored, we would transform the very purpose of governance. Economic prosperity matters, but the well-being of our people — their mauri, their belonging, their peace — is the truest sign of wealth. Healing work is nation-building work.

Addiction, particularly to methamphetamine, remains one of our greatest challenges. Yet, I’ve seen through clients how just one person’s choice to heal from addiction can reverberate through an entire whakapapa, like the ripples created from a stone dropped into still water.

For me, tino rangatiratanga now looks like a community wellness clinic where a doctor, social worker, tohunga, counsellor, and rongoā practitioner work side by side. Our marae could once again become such places of daily wellbeing, not only of grief.

True healing is not easy. It asks us to face the pain that’s been buried for generations. Yet, when we do that, we lift the weight carried by our future generations. Healing is the quiet revolution that doesn’t erase the past, but transforms our relationship with it.

We’ve had so many inquiries, commissions, and reports into our problems and challenges, but the deepest transformation can only  come from within.

When we heal, we uplift our tūpuna and clear the path for our mokopuna. We lighten the burden carried too long.

In learning to heal myself, I began to understand what tino rangatiratanga truly means: It is to be guided not by fear or grievance, but by light, by wairua, by love.

He oranga ngākau, he pikinga waiora. When the heart is well, the spirit rises.

Sun breaking through, as snapped by Kingi in Ponsonby recently. (Photo supplied)

Kingi Snelgar (Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāi Tahu) is a barrister based in Manukau. He specialises in criminal defence and appears in the Youth Court. Before starting as a defence lawyer, he worked as a crown prosecutor and completed a Master of Laws at Harvard Law School.

E-Tangata, 2025