‘Muzzled in a boxing ring’: No Te Pāti Māori ceasefire, despite plea from iwi leaders

Wednesday, 5 November 2025

The Iwi Chairs Forum hoped its meeting with the leaders of Te Pāti Māori could lead to a ceasefire, to stop the public infighting. But the social media sledges continue.

Following a peace-broker meeting, a key Te Pāti Māori figure posted a half-hour monologue on social media in which she vowed not to go silent.

This comes as the Iwi Chairs Forum, which is the most powerful group in te ao Māori, prepares to meet with the other side of Te Pāti Māori, MPs Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris.

Ahead of that meeting, Kiri Tamihere-Waititi, who is the party’s general manager, daughter of party president John Tamihere, and wife of co-leader Rawiri Waititi, showed tension remained high within the party.

Stuff understands the iwi leaders had asked all sides of Te Pāti Māori to stop their social media posts attacking one and other.

But Tamihere-Waititi said she found that request “offensive”.

In one of her videos, she said: “I've been forced into a boxing ring here. My whānau and I have been forced into a boxing ring and expected to be muzzled in a boxing ring without punching gloves, without gloves. That's offensive.”

Kapa-Kingi told Stuff, on Wednesday, that she wanted to refrain from talking publicly about the issue while the peace talks were underway. She said she would be happy to respond at a later date.

Tamihere, the party president, didn’t attend Tuesday’s “peace broker” meeting with iwi leaders, despite being in Wellington as it happened, and being a central player in the dispute. He also didn’t reply to Stuff on Wednesday, when asked why he chose not to attend the hui.

As he remained silent, Tamihere-Waititi repeated the allegations levelled against the party’s own MP. She continued to accuse Kapa-Kingi of mismanaging her electorate budget, and criticised her son - Eru Kapa-Kingi - for launching “a smear campaign” against her father and husband.

“No, I'm not going to stop. I was silent for a very long time while a smear campaign was happening against me and my whānau.

“Silent, for a very long time. And you're not going to shut me up, because as soon as Eru came out, everybody said, ‘Ka pai. You stand in your truth, brother’,” she said.

She was referring to Eru Kapa-Kingi, who used to be vice president of Te Pāti Māori, saying it operated as a “dictatorship model” and had a “toxic” leadership.

She said the two “rogue” MPs, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Ferris, should be grateful they haven’t been kicked out of the party already.

“In a Pākehā party, they would have been goneski straight away, ages and ages ago, ages and ages ago, they would have just been gone, gone,” she said.

While Tamihere-Waititi posted this half-hour collection of videos, party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer declined to speak to reporters on their way to the House on Wednesday.

Ferris, who Tamihere said was working wtih Kapa-Kingi to destabilise the party, was also absent for yet another day at Parliament.

But former co-leader Marama Fox was at Parliament on Wednesday, there to celebrate with Ngāti Pāoa as the iwi arrived to see its Treaty claim finally be passed into law after the iwi was left largely landless as a result of colonisation.

Fox said she was hopeful those in Te Pāti Māori today could regroup.

“The kaupapa is bigger than all of the personal players and no matter how it ends, it will end and we will move forward,” she said.

Moving forward, easier said than done. But the iwi leaders were set to try, again, to get Te Pāti Māori moving on Thursday with a meeting set with Ferris and Kapa-Kingi.