Roimata Smail (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tainui) is a human rights lawyer, educator, and bestselling author of Understanding Te Tiriti. She helps companies, organisations, schools, and communities across Aotearoa deepen their understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, through clear, practical workshops, inspiring talks, and accessible resources. Her advocacy extends internationally, including preparing urgent submissions on Treaty breaches to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Music, art and creativity as tools to learn
As a child, I was always into art, like drawing, painting and music. When I was at Northcross Intermediate school, I won the art prize. I did music too – I played the piano, clarinet, did kapa haka. When I became a lawyer, I continued to do music and started a ukulele band with my friends called The Strumdog Billionaires.
I found creativity alongside my law career by writing waiata in te reo Māori. My husband was a primary school teacher in Kura Auraki (English medium schools) and he wanted to incorporate more Māori into his classroom. But a lot of the available resources were written and he didn’t know the pronunciation from just reading them. So I wrote a few waiata specifically for practising phrases in te reo Māori. My husband loved it so much and the other teachers at his school insisted I create a whole program.
I turned those waiata into Wai Ako, which means ‘learning songs’. I wrote the waiata, went to the recording studio (most were accompanied by my ukulele band!), and I learned how to make a website and create cartoon videos for the program. Wai Ako is now an online platform with 25 original waiata and 300 videos based around the te reo Māori curriculum. Wai Ako is used by lots of children around the motu – about 20,000 tamariki from all parts of Aotearoa.
Visualising law and history through design
In my legal practice, I found it fun and useful to be creative in the way I presented facts and legal arguments. In Waitangi Tribunal inquiries, we are often trying to understand complex government systems – for example the health system or home support system.
I have always felt that creating visual explainers is really helpful for clients and judges. So I started to break information down into tables and infographics. This developed into creating images with the help of a graphic designer. In the health inquiry, I used the picture of a pill bottle to explain funding in the health system. Then we created an image to explain the home support system by visually translating the complex system of barriers for Māori to get home support from a Māori provider into an image of a system of dams. Being creative in presenting the information made it much easier to understand.
When I wrote my book Understanding Te Tiriti, I knew that it needed to focus on the visuals and so that it looked beautiful. I worked with my niece, Ngawai, to create art for the book, and Sarah Healey who had helped me with the Waitangi Tribunal images for the graphic design. The book was really successful, becoming the number one bestseller on Waitangi Day 2025. Understanding Te Tiriti showed that you could explain a subject perceived as complex really simply through the design and art. It wasn’t just the words; it was the visuals that made it a really helpful educational tool.
The importance of knowing the facts
I think that my mahi gives hope and healing. There's healing for Māori and for non-Māori in knowing the facts of what has happened in our country. It gives people hope and clarity for the future.
That’s why I'm continuing to create these books – which I believe are beautiful, even though they're explaining some not so nice things that have happened in Aotearoa. People tell me that there's healing and hope in knowing the facts and not feeling confused. I want to contribute to a society where everyone knows the facts.
What’s next: Continuing to use design, writing and art for education
I’m enjoying learning how to create things that are visually beautiful in order to educate. We’ve just created a taonga version of Understanding Te Tiriti with a hard cover and more elevated design. Understanding Te Tiriti is pounamu green and paua blue, while my second book Understanding Hauora, is horopito pink-red and Kōwhai yellow.
I’ve also been working with my cousin, Noelle Jakeman, to come up with an educational design for the “treaty principles”. The design replaces the outdated “3Ps”, which a lot of people have learned, with principles matching what was actually agreed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We have come up with a visual called TKP, which has two overlapping spheres – one is Tino Rangatiratanga, one is Kāwanatanga, and the overlap is Partnership. These are the three most important principles we are trying to educate people about. It’s been really fun to work with Noelle, and we are using that design to create taonga like jewellery and notebooks.
I want to see a future where Māori have self determination over our own lives – where there's less time having to battle, and more time living the way that Māori want to live. I want to write more books about the government, land, ocean, children, and justice. I hope that these beautiful little books and everything I’m creating can help New Zealanders understand the facts and that when they understand, they will be more open to Māori having self determination.
Tahuna Te Ahi is a partnership with Te Manawa, an initiative ‘for Māori artists, by Māori artists’, grounded in whakapapa, organised by tikanga, and shaped by collective voice.
