This page has a variety of resources to help you on your Māori Land Court journey.
Māori Land Court application guides
To support you through the application process, four plain-language application guides have been developed:
- How to apply for succession
- How to apply for Partition of Māori freehold land
- How to constitute a whānau trust
- How to constitute an ahu whenua trust or whenua tōpū trust
These new guides are designed to help you identify the right application to make, understand where to begin, and prepare all the information needed before applying.
By providing clearer information upfront, the guides support improved application quality and will help you engage with the Court more confidently.
Glossary and Kuputaka
During your journey with the Māori Land Court, you will hear and see many legal terms. To help you understand, a glossary is available which explains the meaning of common words used in the Māori Land Court and Māori Appellate Court.
Te reo Māori is recognised as a taonga and official language of New Zealand. Any person appearing in the Māori Land Court, or in any court in New Zealand, can speak or file written documents in te reo Māori as a right under the Māori Language Act 2016. To support the use of te reo Māori in court, Judge Alana Thomas has created a kuputaka of legal terms in te reo Māori.
You can use both documents together by checking the kuputaka to see te reo Māori translations and then look at the glossary if you want to know what the words mean.
These are the two documents you can use:
- Glossary: this one has common words used in the Māori Land Court and Māori Appellate Court. Each one explains what the words mean, like a dictionary, to help make things clearer for you.
- Kuputaka: this one is a bigger list of words used in the Māori Land Court, Māori Appellate Court, and Waitangi Tribunal. It gives you the te reo Māori translation for each word.
He aratohu kia mārama ai ki ngā kupu o Te Kooti Whenua Māori
Guide to understand the words used in the Māori Land Court
Download the resource here:
He rauemi reo Māori mō ngā kupu e whakamahia ana i te Kooti Whenua Māori me te Rōpū Whakamana i te Tiriti o Waitangi
A te reo Māori resource for words used in the Māori Land Court and the Waitangi Tribunal
Download the resource here: