Margaret Mutu

Margaret Shirley Mutu is a Ngāti Kahu leader, author and academic from Karikari, New Zealand and works at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is Māori and her iwi (tribes) are Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua.

Biography and education Margaret Mutu was born in Auckland. Her father Tame (Tom) Mutu was Māori affiliating with Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua, all iwi from the Northland Region of New Zealand. He was brought up in the Northern Wairoa outside Dargaville and was an orthopedic technician. The schools Margaret attended whilst growing up in Mount Roskill, Auckland were Waikowhai Primary School and Mt Roskill Intermediate. After her father died, she went to school in New Plymouth, at New Plymouth Girls’ High boarding at the Rangiātea Methodist Māori Girls hostel. Her doctoral thesis was titled Aspects of the structure of the Ùa Pou dialect of the Marquesan language. . Mutu is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand elected in 2017.

Career Margaret Mutu is the Professor of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland. She has taught Māori language and Treaty of Waitangi courses since 1986.

Margaret Mutu holds a number of chairperson roles including of the Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu (the council of representatives, or parliament, of the Ngāti Kahu iwi or nation), She is chairperson of Matike Mai Aotearoa: The Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, convened by Moana Jackson, and chairperson of the Aotearoa Independent Monitoring Mechanism which monitors New Zealand's compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She is the chairperson of Karikari marae and of Kapehu marae (in the Northern Wairoa).

Memberships of committees and boards include the New Zealand Conservation Authority, the board of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), the Board of Enquiry into the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement and a technical committee of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity.

Honours and awards In 2015, the Royal Society of New Zealand awarded Mutu the Pou Aronui Award "for her sustained contributions to indigenous rights and scholarship".

In 2017, Mutu was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's "150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.