Nin Tomas Memorial Lecture: Annette Sykes
The 4th annual Nin Tomas Memorial Lecture was delivered by Annette Sykes on ‘The Myth of a Tikanga Based Legal System'.
Speaker bio
Annette is a human rights lawyer specialising in the rights of indigenous peoples to promote their own systems of law and has a strong focus in her career on all aspects of law as they affect Māori especially constitutional change. She has been an active member of the New Zealand Criminal Bar, the Family Courts Association and Te Hunga Rōia Māori, (Māori Law Society) and is an advocate in the specialist jurisdictions of the Waitangi Tribunal, Māori Land Court and Appellate courts as well as the other general courts of New Zealand. Annette is renowned for her activism and protest against the New Zealand government on issues affecting Māori and this has been an active part of her career and community activities. Annette has been practicing law since 1984 and currently has her own law practice in Rotorua, Annette Sykes & Co Ltd where she is from, Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Makino of Te Arawa waka with strong whakapapa connections also to Ngāti Awa and Tūhoe.