Mãori Customary Law: A Relational Approach to Justice

This research paper examines the philosophy of justice embodied in tikanga Maori, the Maori traditional mechanism and approach to doing justice. Based on several months of fieldwork in New Zealand, this study contends that the Maori approach to justice adopts a holistic and relational lens, which requires that justice be seen in the context of relationships and crimes dealt with in terms of the relationships they have affected. As a result, justice must be carried out within the community and the process owned by community members. Further discussion draws attention to the response of Maori communities to the New Zealand government’s attempt to accommodate their traditions and warns against the global tendency to render traditional Indigenous approaches to justice ahistorical through their representation as restorative justice mechanisms.