Little is known about non-government services (hereafter “service providers”) for elderly Māori. As part of the research project Kaumātua Futures, a case study of kaumātuatanga in Ngāti Whakaue—an iwi from the Rotorua District of Aotearoa New Zealand—a service provider scoping exercise was undertaken in the summer of 2019–2020. The purpose of the exercise was to garner an understanding of the number of service providers and their services available to koeke, including kaumātua, in the Rotorua District, the home base of the iwi. What the survey showed was no lack of services but a need to further develop existing services that respond to the specific needs of koeke.

Giving voice to kaumātua perspectives and experiences, and those of older people in general, during the COVID-19 pandemic has been rare because older people are more often spoken about than provided with opportunities to speak for themselves. When they have been spoken about, the focus has been on their vulnerability. While such vulnerabilities are a critical concern, this focus ignored their active participation in and contributions to their communities.

Indigenous New Zealand Māori have maintained many customs evident in our pre-contact histories and, ever-pragmatic, we allowed and continue to allow for the introduction and infl uence of contemporary ideologies and objects of signifi cance. In te ao Māori, our world, such objects include taonga tuku iho, treasures from the past handed down to us. Our taonga are revered repositories that can reveal much about their owners, those owner's families, and the histories of our people, preceding and subsequent. Their tangible presence is often subtle, yet their social signifi cance can be historically and culturally far-reaching, movingly evocative and even controversial.