Bradford Haami (Ngāti Awa) Pou Amorangi/Māori Director

  • Grad Dip Theology

Bradford Haami is the current chair of Te Rūnanga o te Wānanga Amorangi - The Māori Council for Laidlaw College - and sits on the governing board of the college. He is a lecturer in biculturalism at Laidlaw College and holds a Graduate Diploma in Indigenous Theology. 

Between 2012 and 2016 Brad led a reconciliation movement with UK intercessors to all the battlefields of New Zealand. This led Brad to a reconciliation lectureship at the YWAM University at Kona, Hawaii in 2015. He has preached and taught on biculturalism and reconciliation at churches and faith communities throughout New Zealand for many years.  He has led Māori intercession teams to Mongolia, the Pacific and Israel since 2015. He is a Māori representative on the All Pacific Arise Council and is a foundation member of a Māori Christian Leaders Forum,Te Oko Hou (The New Bowl). 

Brad is an accomplished Māori author, journalist and lecturer with added experience in film and television media. He has produced exploratory works on mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), Māori history and more recently Māori biography. He self-published True Red; The Life of an ex-Mongrel Mob Gang Leader (2004), the story of Tūhoe Isaac and the radical shift in his life from a gang leader to a Christian. He also self-published Ka Mau Te Wehi: Taking Haka To The World, the biography of Māori performing arts doyens Bub and Nen Wehi, which won the 2013 Ngā Kupu Ora Best Māori Biography of the Year Award. In 2016 he published The River of the Waters of Life: A Biography of Ike Samuels, a Māori missionary to Papua New Guinea. His most recent works are: Urban Māori: The Second Great Migration (Oratia Media, 2018) and Bringing Culture Into Care (Huia Publishers, 2019). 

He has also written for critically acclaimed television productions and has acted as a consultant to numerous local and international drama, documentary and feature films. His services were crucial to the making of the acclaimed TV thriller series Mataku, the cinema film Tracker and the Māori film Mahana. He has also consulted as a Māori knowledge expert for churches, organisations and museums. He has been an advisor to The Māori Natural History and Moana Galleries at Auckland Museum and the acclaimed travelling Tohora: Whales Exhibition for Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. He was recently the Māori curator/expert on the acclaimed Te Taiao / Nature exhibition at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum. “My interest in storytelling is primarily based on the 'power of the narrative’. Whether in an oral, written, documentary or cinematic form, it has the capacity to convey a message that stimulates conversation and transforms hearts, minds and communities.”