Māmari Stephens (born 1970) is a law academic best known for her work creating ''He Papakupu Reo Ture: A Dictionary of Māori Legal Terms'', a

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

-English a bi-lingual dictionary of legal terms. She identifies as being of

Te Rarawa Te Rarawa is a Māori iwi of Northland, New Zealand. The iwi is one of five Muriwhenua iwi of the far north of the North Island. Rūnanga and marae Te Rarawa has 23 foundation marae: *Korou Kore Marae, '' Ahipara'', represents the hapū of Ng� ...

and Ngāti Pākehā descent. Stephens has a background in

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and law at

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...

, where she is currently a Reader in Law. After graduating, she worked at Russell McVeagh in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

for 3.5 years. In 2019 she was ordained as a priest in the

Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia ( mi, Te Hāhi Mihinare ki Aotearoa ki Niu Tīreni, ki Ngā Moutere o te Moana Nui a Kiwa; formerly the Church of the Province of New Zealand) is a province of the Anglican Communion serv ...

and is a part-time Māori Chaplain at Victoria University. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Wellington City Mission.

Legal Māori Project

Led by Stephens and Mary Boyce of

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa The University of Hawaii at Mānoa (University of Hawaii—Mānoa, UH Mānoa, Hawai'i, or simply UH) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Manoa, Mānoa, a neighborhood in Honolulu, Hawaii. It ...

, this FRST-funded project created the first ever

-English bi-lingual dictionary of legal terms, ''He Papakupu Reo Ture: A Dictionary of Maori Legal Terms.'' The project involved digitising historical texts, and many of the texts old enough to be out of copyright were released by the

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre The New Zealand Electronic Text Collection (NZETC; mi, Te Pūhikotuhi o Aotearoa) is a freely accessible online archive of New Zealand and Pacific Islands texts and heritage materials that are held by the Victoria University of Wellington Library ...

. The other outputs of the Legal Māori Project, including the dictionary, corpus and corpus browser, are all available a
www.legalmaori.net
as a part of the Māori Law Resource Hub, Te Pokapū Reo Ture.

Personal life

Stephens is married to Maynard Gilgen. They have three children and live in Wellington. She attends St Michael's Church, Kelburn, where she is responsible for youth ministry. Her family ''

whakapapa Whakapapa (, ), or genealogy, is a fundamental principle in Māori culture. Reciting one's whakapapa proclaims one's Māori identity, places oneself in a wider context, and links oneself to land and tribal groupings and the mana of those. Exper ...

'' links her to Wainui

marae A ' (in New Zealand Māori, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian), ' (in Tongan), ' (in Marquesan) or ' (in Samoan) is a communal or sacred place that serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. In all these languages, the term a ...

in Ahipara.

Selected publications

*''Social Security and Welfare Law in Aotearoa New Zealand'' (Thomsen and Reuters, 2019) *''He Papakupu Reo Ture: A Dictionary of Maori Legal Terms'' (section winner of the ''Nga Kupu Ora Aotearoa Maori Book Awards.'') *''A Return to the

Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 The Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 was an Act of the New Zealand Parliament aimed at replacing tohunga as traditional Māori healers with western medicine. It was introduced by James Carroll who expressed impatience with what he considered regr ...

'', Victoria University Wellington Law Review, 32, 437

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephens, Mamari 1970 births Living people Victoria University of Wellington alumni Academic staff of the Victoria University of Wellington Māori language revivalists Te Rarawa people New Zealand women academics New Zealand Māori academics New Zealand Māori women academics Māori-language writers New Zealand Māori religious leaders