Māori etiquette in New Zealand

Tapu and noa: the idea beneath the rules

Tapu means restricted, or sacred — not simply "special," but set apart from ordinary use, sometimes because it is dangerous, sometimes because it is dedicated to an atua (a deity or spiritual power) and no longer available for everyday purposes. Te Aka Māori Dictionary describes it as removing something "from the sphere of the profane and putting it into the sphere of the sacred." Noa is its opposite: ordinary, unrestricted, safe to use freely. Food is noa. A person's head is tapu — the most sacred part of the body. Tapu can be lifted, a process called whakanoa, usually through water, food or a karakia (a form of prayer or incantation).

Most of the customs a visitor is likely to meet are really tapu and noa kept apart. Because the head is tapu and food is noa, the two must not touch: don't pass anything over a person's head, don't let food near hair, don't sit where people eat. New Zealand's own intellectual property office puts the underlying rule plainly — combining something tapu with something noa is offensive, because it collapses a distinction that is doing real work. Once that clicks, you don't need a list for each situation; you can work most of them out yourself.

The pōwhiri, as you'll actually meet it

A pōwhiri (formal welcome) follows a set shape, even when it has been shortened for visitors. A karanga — a long call, usually from a woman among the hosts — invites you onto the marae; wait for it, and move forward together with your group rather than ahead of it. Historically a wero, a ceremonial challenge from a warrior, tested a visiting group's intentions before they were let any closer; you may still see a version of it at a formal welcome, and it is theatre with old teeth, not a threat. Whaikōrero, formal speeches, follow — hosts first, then a visitor's representative — and the pōwhiri closes with hongi, the pressing of noses, often paired with a handshake.

The hongi is not a greeting in the Western sense. It exchanges the ha — the breath of life — and Māori tradition ties its origin to Tāne, who shaped a figure from earth and breathed life into her through the nose to create the first woman, Hineahuone. It's the same Tāne whose name the great kauri tree Tāne Mahuta carries, and our companion piece on understanding Māori New Zealand follows that thread further. You are not expected to know the choreography here; follow the person in front of you, and a light touch is normal.

You will usually be asked, or it will be clear, that a koha is appropriate — a gift, customarily money, though it can be food or something of value, offered by visitors to hosts. There is no fixed rate. It is not haggled and not expected to be lavish; if you are unsure, ask your host or tour operator what is usual for the occasion.

At the marae: food, shoes and the wharenui

The practical customs below all come back to keeping tapu and noa apart, and Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, the government's own reference, sets out the shared core.

Rāhui: why you keep out

A rāhui is a temporary restriction placed over an area or a resource — a stretch of coast, a lake, a forest — usually to let it recover, and sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with ecology at all. In August 2026, Ngāi Tūāhuriri placed a rāhui over the customary whitebait season on the Canterbury coast; the Department of Conservation's response was to say plainly that it would "work to ensure this is respected," standing, in its own words, "shoulder to shoulder with the hapū."

Not every rāhui is about conservation, either. A beach, harbour or river can just as easily be placed under rāhui after a drowning or a death — DOC's own notice for Ōpoutere Beach in the Coromandel, issued after a drowning and a missing-person search, restricted fishing, shellfish collection, swimming, surfing and boating there for as long as it stood. If you arrive somewhere to find it closed with no obvious environmental reason on the sign, this is very often why. Either way, a rāhui carries that kind of institutional weight. It is not a suggestion, and it is not a technicality you can read around — if a beach, track or river is under rāhui, the answer is to stay out and go somewhere else, not to look for the loophole.

When to put the camera away

Ask before photographing people, especially during a pōwhiri or a cultural performance — some elements, certain karakia among them, may not be for filming at all, and the venue will usually say so at the door. Te Ara's own guidance to visitors is blunt on the point: some marae do not allow photographs, filming or even tape recording without permission — a phone left running to capture a speech or a waiata for later counts as much as a camera does. Urupā (cemeteries) are sacred ground, not a backdrop; treat one the way you would treat any cemetery, and then some. If someone carries tā moko — Māori tattoo — don't photograph it without asking; it can carry personal history and whakapapa that isn't yours to publish without permission.

Saying it right: the vowels and the macron

This is, by a distance, the highest-return thing on this page. A macron — the line over a vowel, as in ā or ō — marks vowel length, and it changes meaning: NZHistory, run by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, notes that some words spelled the same mean different things depending on it. Te reo Māori has five vowel sounds, and they are steady wherever they appear: a as in "far," e as in "desk," i as in "fee," o as in "awe," u as in "sue" or "boot."

One consonant is worth knowing before you meet a single vowel: wh is usually pronounced close to an English "f" — which is why Whanganui sounds like "Fah-ngah-noo-ee" and Whakatāne like "Fah-kah-tah-neh," not the "w" a first read of the page suggests. NZHistory notes a handful of districts pronounce it closer to a plain "h" or "w" instead, so hearing it said differently in different places is a regional variation, not someone getting it wrong.

Tikanga varies: ask, don't assume

Everything above is the shared core, not a complete code. Tikanga (custom) and kawa (a marae's particular protocol) vary by iwi, by region and by occasion — a tangihanga (funeral) calls for more formal dress and different expectations than a casual visit.

The formal speeches alone follow two different patterns depending on where you are. In pāeke, every host speaker goes first, then every visiting speaker follows. In tau utuutu, hosts and visitors alternate, speaker for speaker. Te Ara traces tau utuutu broadly to tribes descended from the Te Arawa and Tainui waka — reason enough on its own that a pattern learned on one marae may simply not be the pattern at the next.

Te Ara's own advice to visitors is the honest one: ask the local people what they expect, rather than trust a website, including this one, to have the last word. Asking is not a sign you failed to prepare. It is usually taken as exactly the right thing to do.