Margaret Mutu
Margaret Shirley Mutu is a Ngāti Kahu leader, author and academic from Karikari in the Far North and works at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her iwi or nations are Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua.
She obtained a BSc in Mathematics, a MPhil in Māori Studies, a PhD in Māori Studies specialising in linguistics and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. She is Professor of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland. She has taught Māori language and Treaty of Waitangi courses since 1986.
Professor Mutu is chairperson of the Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Kahu's head claimant and chief negotiator for treaty claims settlements, and spokesperson to the media, a member of National Iwi Chairs' Forum, 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. In 2015, the Royal Society of New Zealand awarded her the Pou Aronui Award "for her sustained contributions to indigenous rights and scholarship" and in 2017 elected her Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
