Tikanga Māori Law is Written in Whakairo Māori
Authors: Turei Metiria Stanton 
Published: November 2024

The Māori visual language documents Māori law. Māori law lives in whakairo Māori | Māori art. Māori have many sources of law and use aural forms such as whaikōrero | oration, pūrākau | stories, and mōteatea | traditional chants to communicate the Māori legal tradition. Māori legal communication also uses visual forms, separate from the written word. Those visual forms are primarily whakairo | carving, tā moko | tattooing and rāranga | weaving. This article argues that tikanga Māori law is visually documented and discusses the visual law in two of those forms, whakairo and tā moko. This argument is based on a two-stage research process. First, I reviewed the work of Indigenous jurists and their analyses of Indigenous law and its instruments. I then took an interdisciplinary approach using the theories of visual literacy, encoded objects, and visual jurisprudence to consider how Indigenous law is documented in a visual language. I offer both Māori and international examples of the visual language of Indigenous law. Those examples include tā moko | tattooing, tapae toto | blood gift, and pou whenua | land marker posts from the Māori legal tradition, the wampum belts from First Nations peoples of Canada and the art of the Yolgnu people of Arnham Land.

This analysis is important because Indigenous law is often assumed to be primarily a performative or oral law rather than documented in a visual language. Frame and Meredith describe the risk associated with that assumption in their article ‘Performance and Māori Customary Legal Process’ (2005, 138). My argument expands on their analysis because having identified the risk of Indigenous law being classed as primitive because it is oral not written, they still focus on how Māori legal information is performed rather than visually documented. While Frame and Meredith argue strongly that performed law is no less authoritative than visually documented law, they do not demonstrate how tikanga Māori law is visually documented. This article attempts to do just that.

Legal scholars from other similar jurisdictions have discussed how Indigenous people's legal traditions are recorded in a visual language (Anktar 2016; Cunneen 2017; Morphy 1999 ). Indigenous peoples describe how their visual documentation demonstrates the unique perspectives of what is valued by their culture; how its members understand the connections between the material, social and spiritual worlds; and therefore how their world view is structured and represented in their law. Any analysis that assumes an absence of visual documentation in te ao Māori risks simplifying the complexity of the Māori legal tradition and therefore its legitimacy and applicability in contemporary legal discourse.

The Māori legal tradition is premised on the maintenance and enhancement of whanaungatanga, the fundamental legal principle behind tikanga Māori law. In communicating tikanga Māori law, the Māori legal tradition utilises performative and documented law, as do other Indigenous legal traditions and legal systems. When a person understands tikanga Māori, whakairo Māori and Māori law, it is possible to read that law in tā moko, tapae toto, pou whenua, and other objects. This same approach can be used to understand and read Indigenous law from other jurisdictions.