Kua Tau

Across five decades of filmmaking, broadcasting and cultural advocacy, Tainui Stephens has been finding stories — in people, in place and in the shifting shape of Māori life in Aotearoa. Drawing especially on his much- loved essays for E-Tangata, this collection gathers a lifetime of reflections on the era of Māori reclamation, moving with ease between personal memory
and political insight.

From the turbulence of the 1970s and 1980s to the powerful iwi Māori of today, Stephens writes with an eye for the people who shaped him: kaumātua of the old world, marae aunties, rangatahi finding their place, activists, artists and friends. The essays range across reo and tikanga, identity, leadership, racism, joy and grief — touching on the Springbok Tour, commercial Māori television, kapa haka, a beloved family piano and the digital rituals of a new tangihanga era.

Warm, direct and deeply grounded, Kua Tau is a memoir from a superb storyteller — a collection for anyone curious about their own sliver of time on earth, and the stories that make us whole.