MAURI MEDIA
KIA ORA
Mauri Media is a Māori-owned, future-focused media company telling bold, authentic stories across television, digital, and emerging platforms. Founded by Nathaniel Howe in 2020, we’re building a new kind of production house — one that’s digital-first, kaupapa-driven, and deeply rooted in te ao Māori. We don’t just create content. We create impact.
Our Story
Founded in 2020 by Nathaniel Howe, Mauri Media was born from a bold vision: to flip the script on how media is made in Aotearoa.
After years working inside traditional TV production houses, Nathaniel saw firsthand how outdated, slow, and disconnected the industry had become—especially regarding Māori storytelling. Most production companies weren’t adapting to the digital world. They were stuck in a broadcast-first mindset, ignoring where audiences spent their time.
At just 25, Nathaniel created one of the first true multiplatform series in Aotearoa, becoming one of the country’s first-generation Multiplatform Executive Producers. That experience lit the fire. He knew there was a new way to do this: agile, digital-first, kaupapa-driven.
But it wasn’t just about innovation. It was also about sovereignty.
Nathaniel saw how Māori media overly relied on traditional funding streams—especially Te Māngai Pāho—and how that created a bottleneck for bold, independent storytelling. If we were serious about reclaiming our narratives, we needed to build media models that could thrive outside the system.
And on top of that? The so-called “leaders” of Māori media at the time weren’t walking the talk. A handful of legacy companies were getting all the treats—producing Māori language content that looked authentic on paper but rang hollow in delivery.
Mauri Media is the response.
We're here to do things differently. We combine real tikanga with modern strategy. We speak the language. We know the culture. And we’re building the kind of media company we wish existed when we started — one that’s unapologetically Māori, future-focused, and built to last.