Kuni Kaa Jenkins
Kuni Kaa Jenkins (born 1941) is a New Zealand educator and author. She is a Professor of Education at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. Her work focuses on early Māori writing and the relationships between Māori and Pākehā.
She co-authored Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds, which won the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in Illustrated Non-Fiction, with Alison Jones.
Kaa Jenkins was born in Pōrangahau, Hawke’s Bay, and is affiliated with the Ngāti Porou iwi.
She trained as a teacher at Wellington Teachers’ College and began her career teaching in primary schools in the Hutt Valley, Christchurch, and Auckland. She later served as principal at Aka Aka County School and Oruawharo School and was assistant principal at Kingsford School, Mangere (1983–88).
In the late 1980s she returned to study, earning a BA in Māori Studies and Education (1987) and a Master of Education (1990) from the University of Auckland. She completed a PhD there in 2000 with the thesis Haere tahi tāua: an account of aitanga in Māori struggle for schooling.
As a professor at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, Kaa Jenkins has led important projects on Māori and Pākehā exchange. In 2011, funded by a Marsden grant, she published He Kōrero: Words Between Us (with Alison Jones), about early Māori writing and two-way teaching and learning from 1769 to 1826. The book has 16 chapters on different textual artefacts and includes a 1814 letter from Samuel Marsden to Rangihoua’s chief, Ruatara. It became an exhibition and won several awards in 2012.
In 2012 Kaa Jenkins became head of the social services group Ririki. Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds, about Tuai and Tītere’s 1817 journey to England, was launched in 2017 at Kororareka Marae and won the 2018 Ockham Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. The book uses primary sources to tell a connected story and is part of the Te Takarangi: Celebrating Māori series produced by the Royal Society Te Apārangi and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. The prize money helped fund a trip for Ngāre Raumati to London to show Tuai’s drawings in an Oceania exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Kaa Jenkins has also shared her work at events like the Auckland Writers Festival.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:33 (CET).