Takiwātanga: the Māori word for autism

The Māori word for autism is takiwātanga ‘autism’, which the man who gave it that meaning, Keri Opai, translates as “his or her own time and space”. He made it in 2017 for Te Reo Hāpai, a glossary of te reo Māori for the mental health, addiction and disability sectors published by Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, and Te Aka Māori Dictionary now lists “autism” as one of its meanings. An autistic person is tangata whaitakiwātanga ‘autistic person’. This guide explains what the word means, how it is built, how it came about, how autistic people and their whānau have taken it up, and how to use it in a sentence.

Updated 19 October 2026 · 7 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.

What does takiwātanga mean?

Te Aka Māori Dictionary gives takiwātanga two senses: an older one, ‘area, space, era, range, extent’, and a newer one, simply ‘autism’. The newer sense is the one people search for, and its meaning comes from the person who created it. Keri Opai explained his reasoning when the glossary was launched:

The glossary itself gives the source of the word in a footnote: it comes from the phrase tōku anō takiwā ‘my own time and space’ or tōna anō takiwā ‘his or her own time and space’. So the word does not describe a deficit or a disorder. It describes a person who moves through the world at their own pace and in their own way. English has no single word that says the same thing, which puts it alongside the Māori words with no English equivalent.

How the word is built

Opai describes takiwātanga as “a derivation of my phrase for autism”, and the phrase is built on takiwā. Te Aka’s entries for the two parts show why they suit the meaning:

One Māori word, takiwā, already covers both a stretch of space and a stretch of time, which is how a single word can carry “time and space” at once. Adding -tanga makes the noun takiwātanga, and putting whai in front of it gives whaitakiwātanga, ‘having takiwātanga’, as in tangata whaitakiwātanga ‘autistic person’.

The word itself is not new. Te Aka’s example of it is dated 1899 and says the scope of a battle was seventeen miles: that is the older sense, ‘area, space, era, range, extent’. What Opai created in 2017 was the meaning “autism”, drawn from his own phrase; Te Aka lists it as a second, separate sense of the same word.

Who coined takiwātanga, and when?

Keri Opai (Te Atiawa, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Te Ata, Waiohua, Ngāti Porou), who has taught te reo Māori and tikanga Māori since he was a teenager, created the word while he was writing Te Reo Hāpai – The Language of Enrichment for Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, where by 2020 he was Paeārahi, its Māori strategic lead. Te Pou says the glossary was launched during Matariki week in 2017, after more than two years of consultation with people with lived experience, practitioners, clinicians and kaupapa organisations.

In an essay for Altogether Autism in 2020, Opai told how the word came about. At school he was friends with a boy called Peter, who is autistic and who was bullied, and when he took on what he called “the privilege and burden of creating a Māori word and concept” for autism, his first thought was to honour that lifelong friend. He found that clinicians gave him jargon, so he went looking for lived experience: a colleague at Te Pou, John Vogenthaler, introduced him to Matt Frost, an autistic researcher and policy analyst, and the two spent a couple of hours talking in a café. The conversation reminded Opai of time spent with kaumātua, meandering, but full of wisdom “if you leaned in, really listened, got into the same timing and rhythm”. That, he wrote, is what he based his interpretation on. The glossary’s acknowledgements thank Matt Frost and Peter Galvin “for their insights into autism”.

Opai also wanted the word to be positive: “it seemed quite a positive way of explaining it and that is very important to me and essential for the Te Reo Hāpai resource”. He closed the essay with his kaumātua’s saying, “He mana tō te kupu” – “Words have great power”.

Te Reo Hāpai: words without stigma

Takiwātanga is one of more than 200 interpretations in Te Reo Hāpai. Te Pou says the focus of the glossary “was using language that is non-judgmental and based on the strengths and abilities of people”. In his foreword, Sir Mason Durie, a member of its advisory panel, wrote that it “translates words that might carry stigma and discrimination into words that recognise humanity, hope and personal dignity”. These are some of its entries, exactly as the glossary prints them:

Whaikaha works the same way as whaitakiwātanga: whai, ‘having’, plus kaha ‘strength’. Te Aka records it long before the glossary in the sense ‘to have strength, be strong enough’, and now also lists ‘disabled – a usage created within the Māori disabled community’. The words of encouragement built on the same kaha are in what kia kaha means. Te Pou still publishes the glossary; its resource page lists a third edition, dated August 2026.

How autistic people and whānau have taken it up

The word was shaped from the start by autistic people, Matt Frost and Peter Galvin, and it has since spread well beyond the glossary. The national guideline on autism is now titled Aotearoa New Zealand Autism Guideline: He Waka Huia Takiwātanga Rau (third edition, 2022), and the page that presents it uses tāngata whaitakiwātanga for autistic people.

In 2023 the Ministry of Education reported on Taonga Takiwātanga, a series of marae-based wānanga on autism from a Māori world view, run by Dorothy Taare-Smith (Ngāti Porou) of the Taonga Takiwātanga Charitable Trust with the Ministry, and offered to more than 300 kaimahi in five North Island regions. She said: “Many whānau choose to use the kupu as it moves from a clinical term to one that is non-threatening, easily understood and encapsulates a sense of aroha and manaaki.” She called Taonga Takiwātanga “a mana-enhancing term, which regards people with autism as gifted, or taonga”.

Research has followed. A 2025 Massey University doctoral thesis by Jeanette Hastie listened to eight Māori mothers of autistic children and found that they had resisted “the Western deficit-based model of autism”, drawing on “their cultural understanding of takiwātanga” to turn negative experiences into positive ones. Writing for teachers in 2024, Dr Jessica Tupou of Victoria University of Wellington said the word conveys “something of the respect with which the child, and their way of experiencing, interacting, and developing, is held”.

How to use takiwātanga in a sentence

The simplest way to say that someone is autistic follows a pattern from the course, He tangata pai ia. ‘He’s a good person.’ Put Te Aka’s phrase in place of tangata pai:

Ia means both ‘he’ and ‘she’, and tangata becomes tāngata when it means more than one person. Te Aka glosses tangata whaitakiwātanga as ‘person with autism’ and the glossary as ‘Autistic person’; the Māori is the same either way. The He … ia pattern, and the rest of the grammar around it, is taught in our own te reo Māori course.

Where the accounts differ

The sources agree on who made the word and why. They word its meaning slightly differently, and one of them shows the word is older than its new sense:

Sources

1. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: takiwātanga
2. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: tangata whaitakiwātanga
3. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: takiwā
4. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: -tanga
5. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whai (to be equipped with, have)
6. Te Aka Māori Dictionary: whaikaha
7. Te Pou (2017, 26 June). Māori glossary helps bridge the gap in understanding mental health addiction and disability issues.
8. Opai, K. Te Reo Hāpai – The Language of Enrichment: a Māori language glossary for use in the mental health, addiction and disability sectors. Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui. ISBN 978-1-98-855125-8 (copy hosted by Healthify).
9. Te Pou. Te Reo Hāpai – The Language of Enrichment (resource page).
10. Opai, K. (2020, 14 September). A time and space for Takiwātanga. Altogether Autism.
11. Ministry of Education (2023, 9 February). Takiwātanga – in your own time and space (archived copy).
12. Whaikaha – Ministry of Disabled People. Aotearoa New Zealand Autism Guideline: He Waka Huia Takiwātanga Rau (third edition, 2022).
13. Hastie, J. L. (2025). Māori women’s perspectives of raising a loved one who has autism (Takiwātanga). PhD thesis, Massey University.
14. Tupou, J. (2024, 4 December). Supporting autistic tamariki Māori in early childhood settings. The Education Hub.