Moana Jackson
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Moana Jackson is a New Zealand Māori lawyer specialising in Treaty of Waitangi and constitutional issues. Moana Jackson is of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Porou decent. He is presently Director of Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture (the Maori Legal Service) which he co-founded in 1987.
He graduated in Law and Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington, and after a short period in practise took up the teaching of Maori language. He then undertook further study in the United States before returning to New Zealand to conduct research for the then Justice Department report on the Maori and the criminal justice system, He Whaipaanga Hou. His report was published in 1988.
He has also worked extensively overseas on international indigenous issues, particularly the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He was a judge on the International Tribunal of Indigenous Rights in Hawaii in 1993 and again in Canada in 1995. He was also counsel for the Bougainville Interim Government during the Bougainville peace process.
Jackson was a vocal critic of the government's foreshore and seabed legislation in 2005.
He teaches in the Maori Law and Philosophy degree programme at Te Wananga o Raukawa.
