Māori tattoo meaning: tā moko and kirituhi

Māori tattoo meaning starts with the right name: traditional Māori tattooing is tā moko ‘to apply moko; traditional tattooing’, and the design itself is a moko, which Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines as Māori tattooing on the face or body “done under traditional protocols”. A moko is not a set of symbols with a meaning each. It is made for one person, and Māori artists and scholars describe it as an expression of who that person is: their identity, their people and, in many accounts, their whakapapa ‘genealogy’. This guide explains what tā moko is, what the women’s chin moko, the moko kauae, is, what kirituhi ‘skin art’ is and why it is the word for Māori-style tattoos on people who are not Māori, why copying someone’s moko gives offence, and the history of the chisels and pigments, all from Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Te Papa, and Māori tā moko artists and scholars.

Updated 7 November 2026 · 13 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

The words at a glance

Every meaning in the middle column is Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s.

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning	Note
moko	Māori tattooing designs on the face or body done under traditional protocols	The same word also means a lizard, a logo, and (short for mokopuna) a grandchild.
tā moko	to tattoo, apply traditional tattoo, apply moko; traditional tattooing	Also written as one word, tāmoko, as Te Papa often does. Tā alone means to strike, and to apply moko.
tohunga tā moko	moko expert, tattoo expert	The artist.
moko kauwae, moko kauae	female chin/lip tattoo	Te Aka’s headword spells it kauwae; Te Ara spells it kauae. Both are Te Aka spellings of the word for chin or jaw.
pūkauae	chin, jaw; moko on the chin	Te Papa’s word for the women’s chin moko.
kauae tehe	woman with chin moko
mataora	male facial tattoo	Also the name of the rangatira who, in the story, brought tā moko to this world (see below).
puhoro	moko on the thigh or arm	Te Ara and Te Papa spell it pūhoro.
uhi	moko instrument, moko chisel	A different word from uhi, to cover, and uhi, yam.
wai ngārahu	charcoal pigment (for moko)
kirituhi	skin art, tattooing: non-traditional tattooing that is not done using Māori protocols or imagery	From kiri ‘skin’ and tuhi ‘to write, draw, adorn’.
toi moko	art of tattooing; a tattooed preserved head	The second sense is explained under the history below.

What does a Māori tattoo mean?

Many websites sell Māori tattoo “meanings” as a chart: this curve for family, that line for strength. The Māori sources used for this guide do not work that way.

Te Papa, the national museum, says the meaning of moko designs “appears to be a complex interplay between high aesthetic and a visual language that underscores artistic excellence, identity and role”. Many motifs are shared, such as the spirals on the nose, cheeks and jaw; the remaining elements “were carefully chosen to accentuate and enhance the individual features” of the face.
Te Papa and Te Uhi a Mataora, a national collective of tā moko artists, answered the question directly in a 2004 FAQ: there are “no finite meanings for any single type of design”, and “as the designs themselves vary from one place or artist to another so too do their meanings”.
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a Waikato University professor who wears a moko kauae and led the research for the book Mau Moko, wrote for the BBC that “no two facial moko are ever alike”, and told the Waikato Times that the meaning behind each moko is “as individual as the wearers”.
Tūranga Edmonds, a wearer of moko kanohi (facial moko) who has interviewed many artists, told RNZ that tikanga around moko differs from iwi to iwi: blacked-out lips, for example, can mean the wearer speaks te reo Māori in one region and is a skilled caller, a kaikaranga, in another.

So the honest answer to “what does this Māori tattoo mean?” is that it means something about the particular person who wears it, and the person to ask is the wearer or the artist. A design chosen from a chart of symbols has no such person behind it. The same caution applies to the koru, hei tiki and other forms on Māori jewellery: see Māori symbols and meanings.

Tā moko: the traditional practice

Tattooing is common across the Pacific, but Te Ara says Māori technique differed significantly. Tattooists in Tahiti, Sāmoa, the Cook Islands and Hawaiʻi used combs that punctured the skin and left pigment just under its surface; Māori developed chisels that cut deeper, “producing deeply grooved scars”, a technique Te Ara calls unique to Māori. Te Papa adds that facial moko was a form of scarification “very similar to wood carving”.

Te Ara notes that moko once meant men’s facial tattooing in particular, while kauae was the women’s chin; other parts of the body had their own terms, and moko came to cover Māori tattooing in general.

Mana, tapu and identity

Te Ara’s account of moko and status says that moko represented a person’s mana ‘status’, and that chiefs reproduced their moko as their signatures when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Receiving moko was tapu ‘sacred, restricted’: artist and recipient were held to be in te ahi tā moko, the fire of tattooing, and worked apart from communal areas. Some people of the highest rank were considered too tapu to be tattooed at all.

On whakapapa, the sources should be read side by side. Te Papa is cautious about the past: moko “may also indicate social status, role, and expressions of identity though genealogy, but this remains unclear.” Māori practitioners and scholars today speak plainly about the present:

The 2004 Te Papa and Te Uhi a Mataora FAQ says moko “is born from, and dominated by whakapapa or genealogy”, and that someone seeking moko should ideally have their whakapapa and consent from the family who share it. It describes old moko as “a form of personal identification and curriculum vitae”.
Mera Lee-Penehira of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, who wears a moko kauae, told the BBC in 2018 that moko “reflects who we are and it represents your family, your sub-tribes and tribes”.
Tūranga Edmonds told RNZ in 2025 that Māori identity rests on whakapapa, not on “blood quantum”: “If you whakapapa Māori then you are Māori, and are entitled to all things Māori including moko.”

Moko kauae: the women’s chin moko

The moko kauae is the moko worn by women on the chin and lips. Te Aka spells its headword moko kauwae, and Te Papa uses pūkauae; a woman who wears one is a kauae tehe. Ngahuia Te Awekotuku describes a woman’s facial moko as a panel that can run from the central forehead, rarely done today, through the nostrils and the darkened upper and lower lips to a design on the chin continuing into the throat; the chin pattern is the most common choice.

The women’s moko outlasted the men’s. Te Papa says the last men tattooed in the old period died during the 1920s, while women in various districts went on being tattooed into the 1920s, by then mostly with needles. Te Awekotuku writes that the chin pattern “persisted throughout the colonial period”, despite missionary disgust and the stares of strangers. Te Ara records that women tattooed in the 1920s and 1930s lived into the 1980s, and that their knowledge and memories were recorded.

Not every woman of rank had one. Te Ara tells of Mihi Kōtukutuku, of Te Whānau-a-Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent, whom visiting tohunga tā moko from Te Arawa refused to tattoo because of the mana of her whakapapa and the tapu of her blood. In the revival, Te Ara says, Māori actively encouraged women to take moko kauae “as a means of asserting their identity and the mana of their people”.

Men’s facial moko is called mataora ‘male facial tattoo’ in Te Aka, and moko kanohi (face moko) is also widely used, as in RNZ’s reporting. Te Awekotuku describes men’s faces marked “from forehead to throat”.

Kirituhi: Māori-style art for anyone

Kirituhi joins kiri ‘skin’ and tuhi ‘to write, draw’, and is translated as “skin writing”, “drawn skin” or “inscribed skin”. Te Aka defines it as non-traditional tattooing “that is not done using Māori protocols or imagery”, and gives an example sentence, from a 2014 source, that draws the line exactly: if it is just tattooing a pattern on someone’s skin, with no regard for the spiritual side and Māori protocols, that is called kirituhi.

Tā moko artists use the word for Māori-style designs worn by people who are not Māori. The 2004 Te Papa and Te Uhi a Mataora FAQ puts it this way: “As opposed to Moko which requires a process of consents, genealogy and historical information, Kirituhi is merely a design with a Maori flavour that can be applied anywhere, for any reason and on anyone.” It adds that kirituhi is not void of meaning, since any wearer and a skilled artist can give a design meaning. In 2003 Ngahuia Te Awekotuku said of the Māori-inspired tattoos worn by Robbie Williams and Ben Harper: “We call it kirituhi.”

	Tā moko	Kirituhi
Who wears it	Māori	Anyone
What it rests on	Whakapapa, the consent of family, and the person’s own story	The wearer’s choice: “an individual’s pursuit”, in the words of Te Ruki, a man with full facial moko, to the Waikato Times
How it is done	Under Māori protocols: tikanga, and care for the person’s physical and spiritual wellbeing	As ordinary tattooing, with no Māori protocols
What it means	Something about that person and their people	Whatever the wearer and artist give it

Te Aka’s definition is wider than the artists’ use: on its wording, any non-traditional tattoo is kirituhi, Māori in style or not. Both senses agree on the point that matters: a tattoo without the protocols, whakapapa and consent is not tā moko.

Can non-Māori get a Māori tattoo?

A moko, no: the Māori sources here are close to unanimous. The 2004 FAQ answers the question “Can non-Maori, like Robbie Williams, wear Moko?” with “Culturally it is inappropriate and therefore the answer should be no”, and says plainly that what a celebrity wears “is not Moko”. Mera Lee-Penehira told the BBC that “you can only have it if you have a genealogy that is Maori”, and that the face and head are regarded as particularly sacred. When a Pākehā woman’s moko kauae was debated in 2018, the artist Ngahina Hohaia wrote that the moko “stands as a bastion of our survival”. The BBC also reported a dissenting view, from David Rankin of Ngāpuhi, that it was the woman’s own choice.

Kirituhi is the answer the artists themselves offer. Te Awekotuku wrote in 2012 that Māori artists are sharing this art, “marking the foreign bodies”, while insisting that “it is ours”. In 2009 Arapeta Takoko of Ngāti Porou told the NZ Herald that more non-Māori were wearing Māori art on their skin, “although the patterns were non-tribal”. History has its exceptions: the FAQ notes that a few Europeans who lived among Māori in the 1800s, such as Barnet Burns, wore moko earned through their place in the community rather than by inheritance.

If you want Māori-inspired art, what these sources point to is: ask for kirituhi, from a Māori artist, designed for you and your own story; and leave the face and chin to the people whose whakapapa the moko expresses. How tikanga works more widely, and why it differs between iwi, is explained in what does tikanga mean?

Why copying someone’s moko is offensive

A moko is made for one face and one life. Te Papa says its elements are chosen to enhance the wearer’s own features; Te Uhi a Mataora described its large body works as designs “sculpted to fit the human form” that incorporate “the character and history of the recipient”; and Te Ara records chiefs drawing their moko as their signatures on the Treaty of Waitangi. Copying a moko from a photograph therefore copies something that identifies a real person and their family, which a design from a chart never could.

Māori commentators have objected to the copying of moko imagery whenever it has happened. When Jean Paul Gaultier used moko to advertise a collection in 2007, the Victoria University lecturer Aroha Mead called some of the images culturally offensive and said: “if copying is flattery, tell that to Coca-Cola and Harrods, who rigorously protect their designs.” Linda Waimarie Nikora, one of the Mau Moko researchers, put the concern this way: “we want to share and show (moko) but not, on the other hand, to have the work taken with no consideration to us.” The 2004 FAQ adds that moko artists had joined forces to gain control over the exploitation of their intellectual property in moko.

Where tā moko comes from

Te Ara and Te Papa both trace tā moko to the story of Mataora and Niwareka. In Te Ara’s telling, Mataora struck his wife Niwareka, who fled to her home in Rarohenga, the underworld. Following her, he met her father Uetonga, a tohunga tā moko, who wiped Mataora’s painted face to show how worthless a temporary design was, and then tattooed him. Niwareka knew her husband, swollen and unrecognisable, by the cloak she had woven for him; she returned with him, and he brought the knowledge of tā moko back to this world. Te Papa says the name Mataora means “living face”. Other tellings differ in the details: the 2005 Christchurch version has Mataora’s painted designs smeared with sweat and Niwareka bringing back the art of tāniko weaving.

Te Ara adds that some think the word moko refers to Rūaumoko, the unborn child of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, associated with earthquakes and volcanoes. It also describes an earlier custom: in mourning, women lacerated themselves, haehae, and put soot in the wounds, and Te Ara says early forms of moko evolved from this custom of grief.

Uhi: the chisels

Te Papa explains that Māori brought the comb method from Eastern Polynesia: toothed combs called uhi, dipped in pigment and struck into the skin with a small mallet. In Aotearoa they developed narrower uhi without teeth that cut grooves, followed by toothed uhi that put the pigment in. Te Ara says the chisels were usually of seabird bone and were called Te Uhi a Mataora, the chisels of Mataora, or in some areas Te Uhi a Toroa, after the albatross bone they were often made from; the serrated ones were uhi matarau. Te Uhi a Mataora is also the name of the national collective of tā moko artists quoted in this guide.

Wai ngārahu: the pigment

Te Ara describes wai ngārahu as charcoal made from resinous trees in a specially built furnace, the ash mixed with oil or liquid from plants such as hīnau, māhoe and tī (cabbage tree) into a solid mass and stored in carved containers of pumice or wood. The āwheto, the vegetable caterpillar, was burnt for pigment in the same way. Later, gunpowder and then Indian ink were used.

From bone to needle to machine

Metal reached tā moko quickly after contact: Te Papa says that by the 1840s metal was replacing bone in uhi. Te Ara says darning needles had replaced chisels by the First World War, healing faster and hurting less, and that the leading artist of the 1930s revival, Tame Poata, worked with needles bound to a stick. Te Ara says the tattoo machine is now the preferred instrument, and the 2004 FAQ notes that chisels are still used too.

Decline, toi moko and revival

In the early colonial period, Te Ara says, a trade in preserved tattooed heads made people with moko liable to be killed for their heads, and the practice declined steeply. Those heads are now called toi moko, tattooed works of art, “in order to restore some of their mana”, and Te Papa’s repatriation programme brings them home from museums overseas. Missionaries and settlers also discouraged moko, Te Papa notes.

The revival began in the 1970s and 1980s. Te Ara traces it through gang members who took moko as insignia, then activists such as Tame Iti, and then a new generation wearing moko simply “as an expression of their identity as Māori”. Te Papa says it “really hit its stride in the 2000s”, carried by tohunga tā moko and growing demand from Māori young and old, and credits Sāmoan tattooists with sharing their knowledge, especially for pūhoro; the Samoan language is compared with Māori in Māori vs Samoan and Tongan. Hostility has not disappeared: Te Ara records a man asked to leave a Christchurch bar in 2007 because of his facial moko, and Te Awekotuku’s account of the “adverse reactions” her own moko still draws.

A saying about moko, quoted by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and printed here as the BBC spells it: Taia o moko, hei hoa matenga mou, “inscribe yourself, so you have a friend in death”. The 2005 Christchurch programme glossed it: “Only death can deprive you of your moko. It will be your ornament and your companion until your dying day.”

Going further

The words in this guide are everyday Māori: whakapapa ‘genealogy’, mana ‘status’, tapu ‘sacred’, tikanga ‘the right way of doing things’ and kanohi ‘face’ all come early in learning the language. Our free te reo Māori course teaches them one lesson a day, with every example played in a native speaker’s voice.