Maori & Indigenous Law
Books
Case Law
Māori Land Court decisions 1953 onwards, and summaries of relevant cases in NZ courts 1958-1983.
Commentary
Volume 1 “Aborigines” covers: Constitutional status, Aboriginal customary law, Land law, Cultural heritage, Civil and criminal justice, International law and Indigenous culture and intellectual property.
Databases
Coverage: Coverage varies (Full text).
The Institute provides free access to primary (legislation, treaties and decisions of courts and tribunals); and secondary (e.g. law reform and royal commission reports) Australasian legal materials.
Use the Commonwealth heading under ‘Cases and Legislation’ to locate the National Native Title Tribunal.
Coverage: Coverage varies (Full text)
Provides access to court judgments from all Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, federal courts, and the courts in all Canada’s provinces and territories. CanLII.org also contains decisions from many tribunals nationally.
The Supreme Court, Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal, and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal are the most appropriate for First Nations cases.
Coverage: Coverage varies (Full text)
HeinOnline provides access to thousands of classic legal texts, law journals, US statutory and legal resources, the European Centre for minority issues and full reprint of the English reports (1220-1867).
See the ‘European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI)’ Collection for reports, working papers and articles from the Center’s own journal.
Coverage: 1865-1910 (Index)
The Maori Land Court Minute Books index provides easy and quick access to over 1100 minute books between 1865 and 1910, from the Taitokerau, Waikato-Maniapoto, Tairawhiti, Waiariki, Aotea, Takitimu, and Waipounamu Maori Land Court Districts. Created by the University of Auckland Library and hosted exclusively by The Knowledge Basket.
Westlaw New Zealand allows you to view relevant cases, commentary and authorised reports in a single search.
Dictionaries
Coverage: Coverage varies (Full text)
The H. M. Ngata English-Māori Dictionary is the first dictionary to offer an extensive selection of English to Māori headwords, illustrating their use in sentences and phrases drawn from a wide range of contemporary and traditional contexts.
Encyclopedias
An encyclopedia of Australian Law.
Volume 1 “Aborigines” covers: Constitutional status, Aboriginal customary law, Land law, Cultural heritage, Civil and criminal justice, International law and Indigenous culture and intellectual property.
The Laws of New Zealand is an encyclopaedic work, updated quarterly, which reflects the need to have a New Zealand equivalent to Halsbury's Laws of England. Provides a reliable statement of the whole of the law of New Zealand – statutory, regulatory and judicial. It is a comprehensive source of primary comment required by both practitioners and academics.
Journals
Published by the Māori Legal Academics Group of the University of Auckland Faculty of Law.
Statutes
Māori translations of Acts and Bills circulated among Māori communities by the Crown. This database is part of He Pātaka Kupu Ture / the Legal Māori Archive
Websites
The Australian Indigenous Law Library includes legislation, case law and articles on Australian indigenous issues.
CWIS is an independent, non-profit research and education organisation dedicated to wider understanding and appreciation of the ideas and knowledge of indigenous peoples and the social, economic and political realities of indigenous nations.
Legal Māori documents which describe, debate, use and critique imported Western legal ideas in the Māori language. Includes:
- He reo nō ngā rōpū whakahaere tikanga: the language of Māori governing bodies
- He reo nō ngā whakaritenga me ngā pukapuka here : language of agreement and obligation
- He reo ture nō te Whare Paremata : statutory language
This website provides information about current Māori Land. You can search the database by owner, block name or simply do a map search. This database is managed by Te Kooti Whenua Māori: The Māori Land Court Office.
All Waitangi Tribunal reports are available to download.
The Law Library
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