Valmaine Toki

Valmaine Toki is a New Zealand barrister and solicitor, and professor of law at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Early life and education
Professor Toki is a Māori woman, of Ngati Rehua, Ngati Wai, Ngāpuhi and Ngati Whatua descentiwi. In 2011, Professor Toki was the first New Zealander and first Måori appointed by the President of the UN Economic and Social Council as an independent expert on the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues where she served two terms of three years. Her recent appointment, in 2022, by the president of the UN Human Rights Council to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Issues, as the first Måori and first New Zealander builds on this role.

She studied law at the University of Auckland, followed by a master's degree as an He Ture Pumau Scholar in business administration at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her master's focused on marine resource management. She also completed her LLM at the University of Auckland.

As part of Professor Toki's doctoral research into the disproportionate offending rates of Māori people in the New Zealand criminal justice system, she travelled to Asia and North America to study community court systems. She completed her PhD in 2016.

Career
Professor Toki worked for Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd on Māori fisheries, aquaculture, and asset allocation. In 2007 she was appointed to a lecturer position at the University of Auckland and taught in the areas of contemporary Treaty of Waitangi and Māori issues, jurisprudence and legal method. In 2012 Professor Toki commenced her role at Te Piringa, Faculty of Law, University of Waikato where she remains today.

Her book Indigenous courts, self-determination and criminal justice advocates for the establishment of a marae-based Indigenous court in New Zealand.