Savannah Cowan imagines a Hawaiki Hou.

I often think about the kind of future our tūpuna imagined for us. Being raised in Kaikohe, in the heart of Te Tai Tokerau, I came to see both the beauty of our communities and the barriers we face. Whānau and culture kept us connected, but the reality of growing up in a town with limited opportunities was seeing how education, healthcare, and the justice system too often failed our people. Without knowing it, those experiences were shaping my whakaaro about justice, power, and the kind of world I want for our people. That is where my vision of Hawaiki Hou begins.

Hawaiki Hou is a right every Māori has, the right to imagine and create a future on our own terms. But what does that future look like? Is the ideal dream world for us one of biculturalism? And if so, what does true biculturalism actually mean? True biculturalism, for me, is not just sprinkling te reo Māori and tikanga Māori into a Pākehā framework. It is not asking Māori to fit within a system that was built without us in mind. It is about what Māori were guaranteed under Article 2 of te Tiriti o Waitangi, tino rangatiratanga. That means our right to exercise authority over our lands, resources, and communities, and to make decisions for ourselves as Māori.

Tino rangatiratanga speaks to the ability to live according to our own tikanga and to shape our future without needing permission from Pākehā institutions. True biculturalism is about recognising that two systems can stand side by side, with Māori retaining the mana to govern our own affairs. I have seen the deep disconnect between Māori and the legal system. I have watched people close to me navigate a process that neither reflects nor respects their lived realities. That is why, for me, Hawaiki Hou means building something different, a parallel justice system grounded in our own authority.

To understand why I see Hawaiki Hou as a parallel justice system for Māori, we have to start with the impacts of colonisation. Tikanga Māori shaped every part of life, from how we resolved disputes to how we cared for land, upheld authority, and maintained balance in our communities. Colonisation upended this entire system, replacing tikanga Māori with English law on the assumption we had none of our own. In doing so, the Crown forced us to live under rules that were foreign to our way of life. Māori rights were erased under the guise of “equality,” promoting the fiction that we had no special status in our own land and that any rights we held were a matter of Crown generosity.^[1] Our own system was dismissed as illegitimate, dismantling the balance that had maintained order in our communities.^[2] The result of this is the justice system we have now, one that delivers profoundly unequal outcomes for Māori. For example, despite comprising about 15% of the population, Māori account for 37% of those prosecuted by police, 45% of those convicted, and 52% of the prison population.^[3]

The constitutional foundation for a parallel Māori criminal justice system is clear; it is grounded in our right as tangata whenua, and in the Treaty guarantees to preserve tino rangatiratanga and tikanga Māori.^[4] Although perhaps the most compelling reason is also the simplest: as Moana Jackson said, “the statistics, and what we see, what we know, shows us that the Pākehā system isn’t working for [Māori] ... maybe a Māori way will”.^[5]

Providing Pākehā-centric solutions to a Māori issue is not a bicultural solution.^[6] However, there is still a deep reluctance to move away from the adversarial justice system, rooted in the belief that it is somehow inherently superior.^[7] This belief assumes that if Māori are to have political power or justice, it must be within Pākehā institutions, stripping us of our rangatiratanga.^[8] A parallel justice system should therefore not just copy and paste Pākehā structures into a Māori space. Rather, it would be a separate framework based on our own laws, values, and principles, operating alongside the existing system but not subordinate to it. It would be Māori-led, with culturally relevant processes that strengthen identity and community connection.

Tikanga Māori would form the foundations, adapting to the realities of our modern communities but still rooted in our traditions. Too often, tikanga processes are tokenistically slotted into the current system, such as opening Crown court hearings with a mihi or karakia while the proceedings remain entirely Pākehā, diminishing their significance and stripping them of the context that gives them meaning.^[9] Hawaiki Hou is not a radical idea. It is the logical outcome of the Crown’s own Treaty commitments to partnership and participation. Further, given the gross overrepresentation of Māori in the criminal justice system, the case for greater Māori input, indeed Māori control, is undeniable.^[10]

He toka tū moana speaks to standing strong despite the pull of the currents. For me, this means holding fast to the vision of Hawaiki Hou, even in the face of the legal fiction that such a future is impossible. It is a legal fiction that we as Māori could not govern ourselves as we once did, under tikanga Māori and within a legal system entirely separate from the one imposed on us today. Our toka is the unshakable truth that we are Māori. Whether you grew up immersed in te ao Māori on your marae, surrounded by your kuia and kaumātua, or you were raised without that knowledge, our toka remains. You will always be Māori, and as our tīpuna intended, we will find our way to Hawaiki Hou, the dream of a future by Māori, for Māori.

We come from Hawaiki, where the voyage would not have been easy and our tūpuna would have faced much tribulation, but we are on the path to Hawaiki Hou. Our whāinga is to make sure that path does not lead us back into the same system that has failed us for generations, but into a future shaped by our own authority. That future will not arrive on its own. Like our tīpuna, we will have to build it, defend it, and live it. For me, that means starting now, reclaiming our reo, returning home, and decolonising every space we walk into. Hawaiki Hou is ours to dream, but it is also ours to make a reality.

Ngā kupu āpiti - Notes

^[1] Moana Jackson The Māori and the Criminal Justice System: He Whaipaanga Hou - A New Perspective (Department of Justice, February 1987).

^[2] Jackson, above n 1; John Pratt Punishment in a Perfect Society: The New Zealand Penal System 1840-1939 (Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1992) at 27.

^[3] Ministry of Justice “Key Initiatives: Hāpaitia te Oranga Tangata” <www.justice.govt.nz>.

^[4] Jackson, above n 1.

^[5] Jackson, above n 1.

^[6] Jackson, above n 1.

^[7] Janine Hayward “Biculturalism” Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand <www.teara.govt.nz>.   

^[8] Moana Jackson and Bob Hodge “Justice: Unitary or Separate?” (1992) in D Novitz and W E Willmott (ed) New Zealand in Crisis (GP Publications, Wellington, 1992) at 171-185.

^[9] Paora Moyle and Juan Tauri “Māori, Family Group Conferencing and the Mystifications of Restorative Justice” (2016) 11 Victims & Offenders at 87.

^[10] Paul Heath “‘One Law for All’: Problems in Applying Māori Custom Law in a Unitary State” (2011) Yearbook of New Zealand Jurisprudence 194.

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