Māori activist Eru Kapa-Kingi may have just led a historic march on Indigenous rights in New Zealand but he is reluctant to take credit for it.
“We just opened the door, and [thousands] stepped through,” Kapa-Kingi tells the Guardian from his Auckland home, two weeks after a rally he helped mobilise became the largest protest in support of Māori rights and one of the biggest demonstrations in New Zealand’s history.
Over nine days, people from across the country joined the hīkoi (protest march) as it wound its way down the North Island towards the capital. By the time it reached parliament, an official police count estimated 42,000 people had flooded the streets.
“We had different generations … we had people from all different walks of life coming into the fold and standing in purpose, unity and vision – that was the most beautiful thing I witnessed,” the 28-year-old says.
Kapa-Kingi has become the most recognised face of the Toitū te Tiriti movement, which over the past year has spearheaded the hīkoi and other protests against the coalition government’s policy direction for Māori, and in particular, the controversial treaty principles bill.
The bill proposes to radically alter the way the Treaty of Waitangi – New Zealand’s founding document, signed in 1840 between the British crown and Māori chiefs to form a nation state – is interpreted. Many fear this would threaten Māori rights and erode the Māori relationship with ruling authorities. The bill does not have widespread support and is unlikely to become law. However, its introduction has prompted anger from many who believe it is creating division and undermining the treaty.
At the hīkoi in Wellington last month, Kapa-Kingi addressed the sea of people spilling out of parliament’s grounds and into the city streets, their flags of Māori independence waving in the wind.
“Today, the Māori nation has been born,” his voice echoed over the crowd.
The huge turnout signified not only a unified response to the government’s policies but a collective aspiration to “stand in our identity and nationality as Māori,” Kapa-Kingi says.
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New Zealand’s coalition government has said policies should be provided on the basis of need, not race, and argues its policy shifts are designed to remedy inequities for Māori. When it took office last year, the change in approach sparked a fire in Kapa-Kingi, prompting the inception of the Toitū te Tiriti movement.
For some, it may have felt like the young activist, a teaching fellow in law at the University of Auckland, arrived out of nowhere – as footage of his speeches at protests were being widely shared on social media.
For others, his ascension to leader of the largest protest movement on Māori rights in decades, would have been less surprising.
Te Kawehau Hoskins, the pro vice-chancellor Māori for the University of Auckland, said it was “not a shot out of the blue” that Kapa-Kingi took on the role.
“He is highly politicised, has legal training, a political family and has involved himself in other social networks and movements,” she told the Guardian.
Kapa-Kingi’s political connections are well-established – his mother is a Te Pāti Māori (Māori party) MP, while Kapa-Kingi himself ran for the party in 2023 and is on the party’s executive. Those political affiliations have drawn criticism from government ministers who have accused the hīkoi and the Toitū te Tiriti movement as a Māori party-run political stunt.
But Hoskins said that was “rubbish” and an attempt to minimise and negate what the hīkoi represented: unity.
“This movement … is a continuation of a movement that predated the Māori party – there would have been a lot of people on that hīkoi who vote for [them] but there would have been many who don’t.”
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Kapa-Kingi, who grew up a few hours north of Auckland in Northland, says his political activism was fuelled by witnessing poverty in his communities as a child, his more recent journey to learn the Māori language and his law studies.
One of three triplet brothers, Kapa-Kingi, who also has a younger sister, was not from a wealthy family but did enjoy a childhood of love and support, he says. Seeing children at school without food or shoes was his first exposure to injustice.
While studying law at Victoria University of Wellington, Kapa-Kingi felt frustrated he had to pay a university to learn what his basic Māori rights were, and even then, his education had gaps, he says.
Educating people about Māori rights, New Zealand’s history and challenging settler narratives has played a big part in the Toitū te Tiriti movement, Kapa-Kingi says.
Like other influential figures, including Māori party MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke and the newly crowned Māori Queen, Nga wai hono i te po, Kapa-Kingi is part of a cohort of young Māori leaders helping shape the discourse on Indigenous rights.
Harnessing social media as a tool to connect with wider – and younger – audiences is “a duty”, Kapa-Kingi says.
“For generations our story has been told by other people and mistold … when we’re controlling the narrative … and owning it through social media, its more likely our people will be part of the story as opposed to an observer of it,” he says.
The hīkoi may be over, but Kapa-Kingi says the movement is here to stay.
“It’s beyond any person, it’s beyond any group … we’re not going away, and we are going to keep growing the movement in all ways possible.”
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