The New Zealand national anthem in Māori

The New Zealand national anthem in Māori is called Aotearoa ‘New Zealand’, and it is the Māori version of ‘God Defend New Zealand’ that Thomas Henry Smith made in 1878 from Thomas Bracken’s poem of 1876. Its first verse, the one sung before the English at rugby tests and ceremonies, opens E Ihowā Atua ‘O Lord God’ and closes Manaakitia mai Aotearoa ‘care for New Zealand’. The Māori is not a word-for-word translation of the English: there is no “triple star” in it and no “strife and war”, and in their place it asks that goodness flourish and that God’s kindness settle on the land. This guide gives the first verse word by word, all five verses as the Ministry for Culture and Heritage publishes them, how to say the hard words, and how a Victorian poem became one of New Zealand’s two national anthems and, since 1999, one usually sung in two languages.

Updated 18 October 2026 · 12 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 first verse of the anthem in Māori

These are the Māori words of the first verse exactly as Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, prints them on its official anthem page:

E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā,
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa.
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa.

And this is the first verse of Bracken’s English, from the same page. When the anthem is sung in both languages, this is the verse that follows the Māori:

God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific’s triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.

The Māori verse line by line

The word-for-word column gives each word’s meaning from Te Aka Māori Dictionary. The third column is the Ministry’s own published English translation of the Māori, and the last is the line of Bracken’s English that is sung to the same notes.

Two words carry most of the prayer. Kia, in Te Aka’s words, “indicates that it is desirable for something to occur”, which is why lines five and six read as wishes: may goodness bear fruit, may your kindness come to rest. And me forms what Te Aka calls a weak command, so Me aroha noa asks rather than orders: love us, freely. Whakarangona and manaakitia are both passives, so word for word the prayer asks let it be listened to and let it be cared for.

Line two is the compressed one. Word for word it is of the nations, we, and the Ministry renders it “Of nations and of us too”: God is God of all peoples, and of the people singing. Mātou is the “we” that leaves out the listener, which suits a congregation speaking to God; the four Māori words for we are explained in Māori pronouns.

A version, not a translation

Set the last two columns side by side and only two lines say the same thing: “Āta whakarangona”, listen carefully, is Bracken’s “Hear our voices”, and “Manaakitia mai Aotearoa”, care for New Zealand, is his refrain “God defend New Zealand”. Everything else is new. Pacific’s triple star, which Te Ara finds most convincingly explained as the North, South and Stewart Islands, is not in the Māori at all, and nor are the shafts of strife and war or the praises heard afar.

Hēmi Kelly, then a lecturer in Māori at AUT, describes it in a 2018 paper on the history of Māori translation: restricted to the music of the English, Smith made “a sense-for-sense translation rather than a word-for-word translation”, whose words differ but which “interprets the spirit of the English text as well as containing a rolling rhyme in Māori”. The rhyme is easy to hear: the first four lines all end on a, and lines five and six chime on pai and atawhai, where Bracken rhymes star, war and afar.

The second verse shows the same freedom at its most striking. Bracken has “Men of every creed and race, / Gather here before Thy face”. Smith names the two peoples of the country outright:

Te Aka glosses kiri as skin, whero as red, mā as white, Pākehā as a New Zealander of European descent, and rūpeke as to come together, gather.

All five verses of Aotearoa

Bracken’s poem has five eight-line verses, and so does Smith’s. It is the first that is sung in both languages. These are the Māori words of all five as the Ministry for Culture and Heritage publishes them, with its spelling and punctuation. The Ministry states that no copyright restrictions apply to the words, the rights having passed into the public domain in the 1980s.

E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā,
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa.
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa.

Ōna mano tāngata
Kiri whero, kiri mā,
Iwi Māori, Pākehā,
Rūpeke katoa,
Nei ka tono ko ngā hē
Māu e whakaahu kē,
Kia ora mārire
Aotearoa.

Tōna mana kia tū!
Tōna kaha kia ū;
Tōna rongo hei pakū
Ki te ao katoa
Aua rawa ngā whawhai,
Ngā tutū e tata mai;
Kia tupu nui ai
Aotearoa.

Waiho tona takiwā
Ko te ao mārama;
Kia whiti tōna rā
Taiāwhio noa.
Ko te hae me te ngangau
Meinga kia kore kau;
Waiho i te rongo mau
Aotearoa.

Tōna pai me toitū;
Tika rawa, pono pū;
Tōna noho, tāna tū;
Iwi nō Ihowā.
Kaua mōna whakamā;
Kia hau te ingoa;
Kia tū hei tauira;
Aotearoa.

Every verse ends on the same word, as every verse of Bracken’s ends on “God defend our free land” or “God defend New Zealand”. The Ministry publishes an English translation of the first Māori verse only, so this page translates no further.

Whakarangona or whakarongona? Ihowā or Ihoa?

Printed copies of the anthem disagree on two words, and the Ministry has explained both, drawing on Basil Keane’s history of the Māori translations of the anthems.

• Whakarangona. Smith’s own typescript, found in the bibliography Books in Māori 1815–1900, has whakarangona, written as one word. Te Aka lists it as a passive of whakarongo ‘to listen’, and the Williams dictionary gives both rangona and rongona as passives of rongo ‘to hear’. Searches of nineteenth-century Māori newspapers turned up whakarangona far more often than whakarongona (179 results to 33), so Smith’s form was the ordinary one in his day. Whakarongona was one of several errors introduced when the anthem was published as the national hymn in 1940, and repeated in the Gazette in 1979. The Ministry’s own page still shows whakarongona in its translation of the verse, while its lyrics give whakarangona.
• Ihowā. Ihowā, Jehovah, is the standard Māori form of the name and the one Smith used, and Te Aka lists it. The Ministry says the form Ihoa has been used so long that it seems correct, but is not. Sing four syllables, I-ho-wā, with the last vowel long.

Te Ara records that because the original 1878 translation had been found, an authoritative version of the Māori words could be published in 2011. Copies printed before then, and many still in circulation, carry the older errors.

How to pronounce the anthem’s hard words

Each Māori letter keeps one sound wherever it appears, and a macron makes a vowel long, so the words can be read straight off the page once you know the handful of rules in the Māori pronunciation guide. The ones that catch singers out in this verse:

How the anthem is sung today

New Zealand has two national anthems of equal status, ‘God Defend New Zealand’ and ‘God Save The King’. The Ministry’s guidance is that ‘God Save The King’ is generally used when the King, another member of the royal family or the Governor-General is officially present, and ‘God Defend New Zealand’ | ‘Aotearoa’ at events focused on New Zealand’s national identity. Both are sung at some occasions, such as the state opening of Parliament and Anzac Day.

• Māori first, usually. There are no official rules for singing the anthem in both languages, and the Ministry says you may choose the order. Its guidance is that when the first verse is sung in Māori, the accepted practice is to repeat that verse in English. Te Ara describes Māori then English as the usual order, especially at major sporting events.
• One verse. Te Ara notes that it is not necessary to sing every verse; the bilingual custom it describes is the first verse in each language.
• The words are fixed. The arrangement may be changed, the Ministry says, but the words may not.
• Copyright-free. The words and music are in the public domain; particular arrangements and recordings, including the Ministry’s own MP3s, are not.

‘God Save The King’ has a nineteenth-century Māori version too, ‘E te Atua tohungia te Kuini’ in its 1897 printing, but Te Ara notes that when Māori and Pākehā are both present it is usually sung in English only.

From Bracken’s poem to national anthem

1. 1876, the poem. Thomas Bracken, an Irish-born poet and journalist who had come to Dunedin in about 1869, published five stanzas titled ‘National hymn’ in his newspaper, the Saturday Advertiser, on 1 July 1876, with a competition offering 10 guineas for the best tune.
2. 1876, the music. Three judges in Melbourne chose, unanimously, the entry signed ‘Orpheus’. It was by John Joseph Woods, a schoolteacher at Lawrence in Otago. The song was first performed on Christmas Day 1876 at the Queen’s Theatre in Dunedin.
3. 1878, the Māori version. George Grey heard it sung by schoolchildren at Lawrence in March 1878 and asked Thomas Henry Smith of Auckland, a judge of the Native Land Court, to translate it. Smith’s ‘Aotearoa’ reached Grey in October 1878 and was published in Otago newspapers that month.
4. 1940, the national song. After lobbying by James McDermott of the Post and Telegraph Department, and a recommendation from the National Centennial Council in December 1938, the government announced in 1940 that ‘God Defend New Zealand’ would be the national song, and bought the rights to the words and music.
5. 1977, a national anthem. After Olympic medal ceremonies and a 1976 petition to Parliament, the government announced, in a supplement to the New Zealand Gazette of 17 November 1977, that ‘God Defend New Zealand’ would be a national anthem with equal status to ‘God Save The Queen’. NZ History records that the Minister of Internal Affairs, Allan Highet, made the announcement.
6. 2022. With the accession of King Charles III, the other anthem’s words became ‘God Save The King’.

1999: the anthem in Māori at Twickenham

For most of the twentieth century, NZ History says, most New Zealanders knew only the English words. That changed at the 1999 Rugby World Cup. Before the All Blacks played England at Twickenham on 9 October 1999, the singer Hinewehi Mohi, of Ngāti Kahungunu, sang the anthem in Māori only. Te Ara calls it controversial, and NZ History records that many viewers complained that most New Zealanders did not speak or understand Māori; others pointed out that many could not sing the English correctly either. Mohi told The Spinoff that it “certainly wasn’t a political manoeuvre”: she had wanted to share the language with the world.

The argument that followed did the opposite of what the complainants wanted. Support grew for singing the first verse in both languages, and NZ History records a campaign backed by the government, the Māori Language Commission and sporting bodies that promoted correct singing of the anthem with word sheets and publicity. Te Ara dates the now-usual practice, Māori then English, especially at major sporting events, to the years since 1999, and says the bicultural approach has given the anthem a boost in popularity by emphasising what is unique about it. Mohi was made a Dame in 2021. Talking to 1News, she wondered whether a bilingual version that day would have prompted the same shift.

Where the accounts differ

The official and reference accounts agree on the story but not on every detail. None of the differences touches the words.

Going further

The anthem is not the only fixed piece of Māori that New Zealanders hear on formal occasions: the order of a formal welcome is explained in the pōwhiri. The song that the politician Jim Anderton once wanted as the anthem instead, according to NZ History, is in Pōkarekare Ana. Almost every word of the first verse is already in the course’s vocabulary, among them aroha, atawhai, iwi, pai and mātou. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches them, with the grammar of kia and me, one lesson a day.

Sources

1. Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage: God Defend New Zealand | Aotearoa (lyrics, translation, history, the Māori spellings, copyright)
2. Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage: National anthems (status, protocol, singing in Māori and English)
3. Te Ara: Nancy Swarbrick, National anthems – New Zealand’s anthems
4. Te Ara: Nancy Swarbrick, National anthems – History of ‘God defend New Zealand’
5. Te Ara: Nancy Swarbrick, National anthems – Analysing the anthems
6. Te Ara: Anthems in Māori: ‘Aotearoa’ (image caption)
7. Te Ara: National anthems, sources (including Basil Keane, ‘Aotearoa and E te Atua tohungia te kuini’, Te Pouhere Kōrero 5, 2011)
8. NZ History: New Zealand’s national anthems
9. NZ History: Thomas Bracken
10. NZ History: 1977 key events
11. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: W. S. Broughton, Bracken, Thomas
12. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Grey, George
13. Hēmi Kelly, A Tradition of Māori Translation, Neke: The New Zealand Journal of Translation Studies 1:1 (2018)
14. The Spinoff: Don Rowe, How Hinewehi Mohi made the Māori national anthem mainstream (2018)
15. 1News: Hinewehi Mohi, who sang national anthem in te reo Māori at 1999 Rugby World Cup, made a dame (2021)
16. Wikipedia: 1999 Rugby World Cup (the England v New Zealand pool match, Twickenham, 9 October 1999)
17. Wikipedia: Hinewehi Mohi
18. Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington: Te reo Māori pronunciation guide
19. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: e (addressing someone)
20. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Ihowā
21. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: atua
22. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: o
23. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ngā
24. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: iwi
25. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mātou
26. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rā (particle)
27. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: āta
28. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whakarangona
29. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whakarongo
30. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rangona
31. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: me (weak command)
32. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: aroha
33. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: noa
34. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kia
35. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: hua
36. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: ko
37. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: pai
38. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tau (to settle)
39. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tō
40. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: atawhai
41. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: manaaki
42. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mai
43. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Aotearoa
44. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: kiri
45. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whero
46. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mā (white)
47. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: Pākehā
48. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: rūpeke
49. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: mano