Tikanga Maori: Living by Maori Values

Here is an authoritative and accessible introduction to tikanga Maori. It is essential reading for all who seek to understand the correct Maori ways of doing things as they were in the past, as they are in the present—and as they may yet be.

In this wide-ranging book Hirini Moko Mead explores the creative arts and interactions between older and newer social groupings such as iwi and urban Maori authorities; he develops approaches to problems such as violent crime and substance abuse; and he surveys the ways that tikanga guides relationships between people, with the Gods and the land. He also discusses ways that tikanga Maori may help us to direct our stance towards present-day bioethical problems raised by technological advances in areas such as genetic engineering and inter-species organ modification, and he proposes guidelines to help us to test appropriate responses to challenges that may yet be laid down.

Tikanga has emerged as a new area of study, as a field of great opportunities for research and as a body of knowledge that needs to be taught in our schools. It is a set of protocols and a basket of knowledge that our leaders and educators need to know in order to be more effective in what they do. It is knowledge that our people need to understand, discuss, debate and pass on to others. There is every indication that tikanga Maori will become more important in the years to come rather than the reverse. It has come out of hiding and is now in the bright light of day.

• Hirini Moko Mead, Author

  Sir Hirini Moko Mead is a pre-eminent Māori writer, commentator and scholar. In the course of a distinguished academic career he authored numerous books on Māori art (including Te Toi Whakairo: The Art of Maori Carving, with Oratia Books) and developed the first Department of Māori Studies in the country at Victoria University. He was knighted in 2009 for services to Māori and education. A leader of his iwi (tribe) Ngāti Awa, he lives in Wellington, New Zealand.