Te Kooanga Uetuhiao Te Owai Awatere-Reedy (Victoria University of Wellington) - has been working as an NPM and Borrin Foundation Intern on the project Te Akinga: a Māori law treatise.

With supervision provided by Dr Carwyn Jones, Te Kooanga has been conducting research that will help to frame the development of tikanga Māori within the practice of law in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This research has involved looking at Māori migration through the Pacific, and also at the legal systems of Polynesia – such as Tokelau, Samoa and the Cook Islands – to research linguistic similarities.

Te Kooanga has been concluding her programme of work by following the migration of waka and development of iwi identity, then applying some of the tikanga principles born out of this evolution to current laws.

At the start of April, there will be an authors' manuscript hui held in Te Whanganui-a-Tara where the team will come together to present, brainstorm, provide feed-back and plan the next stages of a book that is being written on this subject matter. This wider book project 'Te Akinga' has NZ Law Foundation funding.

Over the coming weeks NPM will share more stories from our summer internship projects, providing an opportunity to hear some of our tauira talk about their internship research.