Dr Paerau Warbrick
Barrister, BA, PGDipArts, MA, LLB, DipGrad, PhD (Otago), Barrister & Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, Legal Practitioner of the Supreme Court of New South Wales
Pūkenga, Lecturer (Appointed 2004)
(Ngati Pahipoto and Warahoe, hapū of Ngāti Awa)
Contact details
Room Richardson South Tower, Rm 4S6
Phone 64 3 479 3973
Fax 64 3 479 8525
Email paerau.warbrick@otago.ac.nz
Research
Dr Warbrick comes from a history and law background. He holds postgraduate degrees in history and a Bachelor of laws and Diploma for Graduates with law subjects.
Dr Warbrick is not only a lecturer in Te Tumu, he is also Barrister. He has held a practising certificate for over eleven years and his expertise is in Māori land law. Dr Warbrick has regularly appeared in the Māori Land Court and before the Māori Appellate Court and is now the leading barrister in Māori Land Court matters in the South Island. One of his mentors was the late Robin Corcoran, solicitor of Kaiapoi near Christchurch. The judges which he has regularly appeared before are Chief Judge Issac, and Judges Savage, Wainwright, Harvey and Reeves. Dr. Warbrick was the lead counsel for the respondents in the Māori Appellate Court’s decision in Tau v Nga Whanau o Morven and Glenanvy (2010). On the advice of Dr. Warbrick, the Māori Appellate Court overturned its earlier decision and made the evidentiary proof in Chief Judge’s applications one of ‘on the balance of probabilities’ as opposed to ‘beyond reasonable doubt’.
See http://www.justice.govt.nz/courts/maori-land-court/documents/judgments/pdfs-maori-appellate-court-sittings/2010/Waihao%20903%20Section%20IX%20Block.pdf
Dr Warbrick sits on the Common law committee of the Otago Branch of the New Zealand Law Society and is also a legal adviser to lawyers in the Ngāi Tahu Maori Law Centre in Dunedin. He has been a supervising lawyer to other barristers and solicitors who are now in practise elsewhere in New Zealand namely Aroha Reihana (Wellington), Rachel Hall (Hamilton), Bibiana Lee (Auckland), Natasha Firth (Wellington), Sommer Paekau (Hamilton), Nadine Warbrick (Wellington), Desiree Mahy (Dunedin) and Haines Ellison (Dunedin).
Dr Warbrick's academic research interests focuses on Māori and law and the Treaty of Waitangi. His current research focuses on the Māori Land Court in the 1960s and 1970s (which was the topic of his PhD). Paerau’s current research is looking into issues around tamati whāngai (children adopted according to Māori custom) in the Māori Land Court. His other research focuses on Judges of the Native Land and Māori Land Court and Trust law issues. He aims to produce research on all aspects of the Maori Land Court including its history, current law and jurisprudence and ethnography. Dr Warbrick also has an interest in the uses of autobiography and autoethnography in a Māori and Indigenous context.
Teaching
- MAOR 204 - Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The Treaty of Waitangi
- MAOR 304 - Te Rōpū Whakamana i Te Tiriti: The Waitangi Tribunal
- MAOX 404 - Toitu te Whenua - Māori Land and Lore
- INGX 501 - Indigenous Theory and Method (Guest Lectures)
- MAOR 102 - Māori Society (Guest Lectures)
Current/Past Supervision
Current
- Viki Robertson - MIndS - Breastfeeding and Law in an Indigenous Context
- Kererua Savage - MIndS - Tino Rangatiratanga: Treaty of Waitangi Settlements
- Ben Manley - MIndS - Imagined Boundaries: The Native Land Court and Maori Identity
- Taiawhio Waititi - MIndS - Manaakitanga and the section 98 fund under Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993
- Samantha Jackson- MA - Matauranga Māori and Ngāti Whātua
- Anna Parker - MA - Making Peace? Meaning making in the tauiwi workers movement
- Whakarongotai Hokowhitu - PhD - Ngāti Pūkenga Identity
Past
- Aroha Gilling - MIndS - Treaty of Waitangi and Social Work (2011)
- Suzanne Spencer - MIndS - Ka Wahine and Takata Pora: Murihiku Women and Pakeha Settlers (2011)
- Stacey Reynolds - BA (Hons) - Māori and the Criminal Justice System: Towards 2010 (2010)
- Tamasone Esera - MIndS - The Impact of the new Act (Land Titles Registration Act 2008) on customary land ownership in Samoa (2010)
- Henare Mita - MA - The Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998: The quest for Ngāi Tahu tino rangatiratanga (2009)
- Natalie Coates - BA (Hons) - Kia tū ko taikākā: Let the heartwood of Māori identity stand -An investigation into the appropriateness of the legal definition of ‘Māori’ for Māori (2008)
- Kanakolu Noa - MIndS - Indigenous Peoples and International Law (2006)
- Erica Newman - BA(Hons) - Maori, European and Half-caste Children; The Destitute, the Neglected and the Orphaned An Investigation into the Early New Zealand European Contact Period and the Care of Children 1840 - 1852 (2006)
Major Research Outputs
Book Chapters
Warbrick, Paerau. 2009. ‘Chapter 3: Treaty of Waitangi’, New Zealand: Its History, People and Culture, X Zhao & X. Qiao (eds.), Fudan University Press, Shanghai pp.69-98. [in Chinese].
Warbrick, Paerau. 2008. ‘Treaty of Waitangi’, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present, Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Oxford University Press, New York
Theses/Dissertations
Warbrick, W. Paerau. 2009. ‘The Māori Land Court 1960-1980: An autoethnographic and social commentary’, Unpublished PhD thesis in Māori Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin
Warbrick, W. Paerau. 1998. ‘Labour’s Bill of Rights. The Labour Government’s attempts at a bill of rights in the 1980s’, Unpublished MA thesis in History, University of Otago, Dunedin
Warbrick, W. Paerau. 1994. ‘New Zealand Judges and the Law Lords: The failure of the New Zealand Judiciary to adopt a distinctive New Zealand-style jurisprudence 1918-1960’, Unpublished PGDip Arts dissertation in History, University of Otago, Dunedin
Compilations
Complete list of all the judges of the Native and Māori Land Court 1864 to present, at http://www.justice.govt.nz/courts/maori-land-court/about-us/our-judges-1/past-mlc-judges
Addresses
Warbrick, Paerau. 2009. Māori and Pākehā Legal Relations 1900-1960. In:
Interracial Intimacies Symposium, Dunedin, June 2009.
Warbrick, Paerau. 2008. Indigenous Legal Traditions: Looking at ways to reconcile aboriginal law and common law. A practical and principled approach. In: Aboriginal Law Week Series, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, March 2008
Warbrick, Paerau. 2007. Of the people, for the people, by the people: He tangata, He tangata, He tangata - The value of autobiography in academia: Maori women and Post World War Two American Presidents. In: Self Narratives : A Research Conversation Day, Dunedin, December 2007
