My wife and I stood by the water’s edge at our local beach on a gorgeous spring morning, each holding a small pounamu toki necklace hung on a black woven-jute ribbon. They had been crafted from a single piece of pounamu and symbolised courage and the power to shape one’s own path.
It was a typically thoughtful gift from my wife and marked our 25th wedding anniversary. We walked the 300m to the beach to bless the necklaces with a prayer and to wash them in the water, honouring Māori tradition. Because pounamu is considered tapu, connected to the spiritual world, we had to lift the tapu in this way before they could be worn.
My toki then stayed in the top drawer of my bedside table. I’ve never worn it outside the house and it has hung around my neck three times for only a handful of minutes. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.
The unease isn’t about the stone itself, which is beautiful, smooth and dark green, or what the toki represents. Instead, it comes from a web of conflicting thoughts, emotions and perceptions about Māori and being Māori that have challenged me throughout my life and which I’m still trying to untangle. I’ve swung the pendulum from ambivalence to disdain, with pit stops for understanding, empathy and yeah-nah.
I haven’t worn it because it doesn’t feel authentic to do so. Māori blood flows deep in my veins through my mother and her lineage that spans at least four generations and stretches across the Hauraki Plains through Ngāti Pāoa and Ngāti Hako, with our marae being Kerepeehi and Waihī. Ngāti Pāoa traces back to the Tainui waka, and their traditional lands stretch from the western side of the Hauraki Plains to Auckland, including Waiheke Island. Ngāti Hako is widely recognised as the earliest iwi to settle in the Hauraki region, with whakapapa and oral traditions suggesting their presence dates back at least 800-1000 years, predating many of the later migrations associated with the Tainui waka.
My mother, Marjorie, was one of nine children, with only three connecting meaningfully to the culture during their lives. We were not one of them, and we didn’t have an understanding, connection or grounding in Māori.
Siblings scattered
After my grandmother, Bella Ngapere Witika, died in 1941 giving birth to her ninth child, my mother said the family was forced off their land on the Hauraki Plains: a non-Māori head of the household and “half-caste” children were no longer welcome.
Six of the seven girls were put into the grey dormitories of an Auckland orphanage where food was rationed and sugar sacks were made into clothing. The last girl was adopted out and the two boys were taken in elsewhere. Their father, Leslie Murphy, went from one building site to another across the North Island looking for work so he could reclaim them but never succeeded. My mother spent several years in the orphanage before leaving at 17 to train as a nurse. Widowed at 30, her life became about survival and creating opportunity for me, her only child. Working 18-hour days and backing herself to build a business around caring for the elderly, she succeeded in lifting us into the middle class.
Being Māori in the 60s and 70s meant walking a tightrope: too Māori and you risked being seen as lazy, angry or backward; not Māori enough, and you were accused of forgetting who you were. That pressure was inherent in the institutions. Schools streamed Māori kids into manual labour or steered them away from academic pathways. Urbanisation scattered tight-knit communities across cities where Māori became invisible or propped up the poverty and crime statistics. Pushback through protest, whether for land rights or language revival, was met with suspicion, resistance or hostility. Given her circumstances and the attitudes of the time, it’s easy to understand the path my mother chose.
The difference between then and now is striking. Anyone can learn about and engage with Māori culture, regardless of their background, and it has flourished. Identity is no longer measured by blood quantum but by whakapapa, shifting the power to define belonging back to Māori themselves. And although that’s all positive there is a flip side, and another reason I choose not to wear the toki. Tikanga Māori has become more visible and sometimes more commercialised. For me, that can strip away some of its meaning.
There are so many toki around nowadays, especially in the politically correct world of corporate New Zealand, where I’ve spent the past 15 years. It can feel gratuitous and kitsch: pounamu or kete for leaving gifts; karakia before meetings; company-wide morning teas opened by someone mangling words read off a phone.
We’ve moved from organic cultural revival to institutional and corporate force-feeding. It feels like politically correct box-ticking that nullifies authenticity. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. That shift has cheapened what wearing a toki means for me.
But there’s something deeper troubling me. Māori have a PR problem thanks to their politicians, particularly Te Pāti Māori. Three decades in media and communications have shown me how messaging shapes public opinion. The stunts and hostility are disrespectful of the progress made and a roadblock to growing public support to achieve more. This isn’t just professional observation, it’s personal frustration.
The dominant Māori narratives have moved over my life from justice and standing up for rights to grievance and victimhood. No vision of the future, no pathway to achieving that, no bringing of the people with you. No doubt it works for Te Pāti Māori’s support base, but I’m yet to see it gain traction with the broader electorate. This messaging problem isn’t abstract to me. I realise that if I wore the toki it could be interpreted in this environment as an endorsement of politicians whose approach I oppose.
My view on Māori was initially influenced during the impressionable period of my teenage and early adult years in the 70s and 80s. Māori, justifiably, protested loudly for the rights they were being denied and in doing so shaped the path towards biculturalism.
Fifty years on, that path has led to opportunities for Māori across our society, including financially. A Reserve Bank report noted the Māori economy contributed $32 billion to New Zealand’s GDP in 2023, up from $17b in 2018. And its asset base has grown from $69b in 2018 to $126b in 2023, an 83% jump. Banks court the Māori dollar and it’s unusual to find a major corporate that doesn’t have a pouhere Māori (iwi liaison person).
This deserves celebrating, but instead of building on that momentum, we’re stuck in a cycle of confrontation and division. The rhetoric often feels binary ‒ you’re either for or against Māori. That leaves people like me, who sit somewhere in the middle, feeling unsure where to stand. Not enough knowledge to judge the details; not enough trust to take it at face value.
From a comms perspective, I’ve learnt if you can’t build bridges and won’t compromise, the public will tune out. Those who shout the loudest rarely win lasting support. Show me the vision. Show me the future. Show me something I can believe in.
Flags and meaning
I have tried other ways to show support for my heritage. Five years ago, we started flying the tino rangatiratanga and United Tribes flags from the roof of our home.
Our house sits on one of two ridges that frame Kohimarama, an Auckland seaside suburb. It’s a well-off neighbourhood with expensive properties and German cars in the driveways.
There’s irony in flying indigenous flags where my iwi once beached their waka to raid the area for food. The main concern for many locals now is how fierce their children’s school haka is, a slice of Māori culture that feels safe ‒ unlike the flag. Not surprisingly then, when I started flying mine, it didn’t take long to attract comment. It came back to me that a dinner party conversation had included, “It’s just not right to fly it [tino rangatiratanga] here.” That drew a wry smile from me.
The disapproval, though, wasn’t always so polite. One afternoon, I arrived home to see splashes of coffee staining the United Tribes, flag with a takeaway cup and lid thrown across the roof. Someone had walked down our shared driveway and taken aim, two storeys up.
The counterbalance came one day as I walked up from the garage and a car slowed and pulled over directly across the road. Four men in hi-vis jackets were staring up at tino rangatiratanga. As I stepped into view, they broke into broad smiles. A passenger in the back gave me a thumbs up, and the driver shouted “Chur, bro!” and then they headed up the hill.
A year or so later, in late 2024, both the tino rangatiratanga and United Tribes flags filled the skies above the hīkoi opposing the already-dead-in-the-water Treaty Principles Bill. Although the organisers framed the hīkoi around defending Māori rights, it soon expanded to include a range of other causes, from LGBTQ+ rights to solidarity with Palestine.
To me, it felt less like a unified statement and more like a performance with flags as props. That shift diluted the meaning I attached to them. I flew the flags to represent pride, history and partnership, not division, protest and manipulative politicians. I took them down and haven’t flown them since.
I sometimes wonder if my grandchildren will have any idea of the conflicted relationship that many of my generation have with their Māori heritage. Being born in an era where te reo is accepted widely, pōwhiri open major events, and English place names are being replaced with Māori, they will probably find it all a bit strange.
The flags are stored away for now, like the toki. But maybe one day, both will come out when meaning matches symbol, and when being Māori feels less performative and more personal.
Chris Mirams is a former journalist and author who has worked in corporate communications.
