Undergraduate courses

Te Wai Ariki members teach into a number of the compulsory courses - from first year until year 3 - where there is a focus on law and Māori, such as Māori land law and within the Treaty of Waitangi component of Public Law. We also place a strong emphasis on the impacts of colonisation and colonial law in many of the compulsory courses.

Auckland Law School offers, and Centre members teach into, a wide variety of expanding elective courses concerning Indigenous peoples and the law.

Our elective courses include:

• Indigenous Rights Legal Clinic
• Ngā Tikanga Māori
• Māori Land Law
• Comparative Constitutional Law and Indigenous Peoples
• Contemporary Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi Issues
• Indigenous Peoples and International Law
• Iwi Corporate Governance
• Mat̄auranga Maōri and Taonga/Cultural Property and Indigenous Intellectual Property
• Indigenous Peoples, Criminal Law and Justice
   

Indigenous Rights Legal Clinic

Established in 2019, the Clinic is Auckland Law’s School flagship clinical programme providing students with practical opportunities to work on issues of importance for Māori and to learn more about tikanga Māori.

Adjunct Professor Annette Sykes, one of Aoteraoa New Zealand’s most highly respected advocates for the rights of Māori, led the course in 2022 and focused on tikanga Māori in evidence before the courts.

The course has previously been led by prominent Māori lawyers Maia Wikaira and Natalie Coates.

Students may study Māori or Indigenous rights as an Honours seminar course:

• Indigenous Peoples and the Law
• Mātauranga Māori and Taonga

Where students undertake 40 or more points in our elective courses, they will receive Ngā Toki o Te Ture - Certificate of Indigenous Peoples and the Law.