Minority Within a Minority: Eru Hiko-Tahuri on Being a Māori Atheist

What challenges do Māori atheists face navigating identity, community, and cultural expectations in New Zealand?

Part 2 of 5

Eru Hiko-Tahuri, a Māori creative and author of Māori Boy Atheist, explores his journey from religious upbringing to secular humanism. Hiko-Tahuri discusses cultural tensions as a Māori atheist, advocating for respectful integration of Māori values like manaakitanga and whanaungatanga within secular contexts. Hiko-Tahuri discusses the complex reality of being both Māori and atheist in New Zealand. He explores cultural tensions, the lack of representation, and the personal journey behind Māori Boy Atheist. His story reveals the emotional and social challenges faced by those who reject religion within deeply spiritual Indigenous communities.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Statistically, I do not know of a single government census that includes hate crime data specifically against atheists, agnostics, or humanists. Have you ever seen one?

Eru Hiko-Tahuri: Never heard of it.

Jacobsen: In Canada, the categories usually include antisemitism—perennially at the top—followed by anti-Muslim sentiment or “Islamophobia,” then discrimination against Roman Catholics. However, Catholics make up about 30% of the Canadian population, so naturally, they’ll be represented in the data due to sheer numbers.

Still, antisemitism usually tops the list. But recent research out of North America shows that people’s emotional responses to atheists are often rooted in disgust and distrust—those deep, visceral reactions.

Hiko-Tahuri: Yes, I’ve read about that.

Jacobsen: And when you break it down by political affiliation—Democrat, Republican, Independent—in the US, the negative perceptions of atheists remain low across all groups. The numbers are roughly as low as those for Muslims, even among Democrats and Independents. It’s slightly better in those groups than among Republicans, probably due to the strong influence of the evangelical white base.

But across the board, atheists still rank low in terms of public trust. So clearly, we’re missing something in national censuses or surveys. The social stigma is real, but it’s under-measured.

Hiko-Tahuri: I’d agree with that. In the New Zealand context, I wouldn’t say I’ve experienced hate for being an atheist. It’s more that I’m seen as an outlier—maybe eccentric or just “different”—rather than hated.

Sure, a few people have been upset or uncomfortable with it. But New Zealand is pretty liberal. Most people here don’t care what you believe—as long as you treat others well. That’s what matters most. We’re not as politically polarized, either.

Jacobsen: That’s refreshing. Demographically, what’s the approximate proportion of people with Māori heritage in New Zealand’s population?

Hiko-Tahuri: They say it’s approaching a million people out of a total population of about five million—roughly 20%.

Jacobsen: That’s significantly higher than in Canada. Indigenous people comprise around 4 or 5% of the population.

Within your community, have you encountered a dynamic similar to what Mariam Namazie describes among ex-Muslims in Britain? She talks about “minorities within minorities.” That is, Muslims are a minority in the UK, but ex-Muslims are a minority within that minority, often facing backlash both from within their communities and from wider society.

Hiko-Tahuri: I understand that idea. You leave a belief system, but you become doubly marginalized. It’s not that extreme here, but there are similarities.

Some Māori do view secular Māori as having stepped outside the bounds of what it means to be Māori, especially when religion has become entwined with their cultural reawakening. So yes, you can feel like a minority within a minority sometimes, but it is more subtle here—less hostile, I would say.

Jacobsen: That distinction makes sense. In the UK context, to support ex-Muslims publicly is sometimes misread as being anti-Muslim, which complicates everything. Identity politics can overshadow human rights issues.

Hiko-Tahuri: When cultural identity and religion are closely tied, questioning one can feel like attacking the other—even if that is not the intention.

Jacobsen: And you find yourself in this strange dichotomy—it is just a category error. You can support both Indigenous identity and secular values without negating either. It is just a mistake in framing. Do you experience that kind of tension in New Zealand as a Māori person? Or, more specifically, as a Māori atheist?

Hiko-Tahuri: Yes, definitely—as a Māori atheist, I do. I have had conversations with a few others who are both Māori and atheist, and we often feel like a minority within a minority. It is a unique position to be in. Interestingly, though, statistically, about 53% of Māori now report no religious affiliation.

Jacobsen: There you go.

Hiko-Tahuri: Most people would still describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Maybe only 10% would openly identify as atheists. So, it is still a tiny group to which I belong.

Jacobsen: Right.

Hiko-Tahuri: That leads back nicely to the idea of “coming out” as both Māori and atheist. I remember that journey. I had been reading all the usual books—The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, and so on.

I struggled with the language in some of those books because they used words I had never encountered before. As the whole topic was so new, I had to sit with a dictionary beside me while reading.

Eventually, I reached a point where I realized, “I don’t believe in this anymore.” Then, the more complex question came: “What do I do about it?” And more importantly, “Can I even tell anyone?”

While I was at university, I met a few other Māori who had started to question Christianity, too. By understanding the colonization of Aotearoa, they began to see that Christianity was imposed here—brought in by missionaries from overseas. It was not ours originally. So some of us thought, “Why should we continue believing something that was forced upon us?”

That was my thinking for a while. But then I had another realization: I had rejected Christianity using a rational lens, but I had never applied that same critical lens to traditional Māori beliefs—the atua, the creation stories, the pantheon of gods.

So I did. When I examined those beliefs through the same standards, I had to admit—they did not add up either.

That is when I had the next big moment: “I don’t believe this either. So… now what? And how am I going to tell people?”

For a long time, I did not. At first, I equated being an atheist with simply not being Christian—since Christianity is still the dominant religious framework in New Zealand.

But it took years to fully embrace the term atheist in the broader sense—to reach the point where I could say, “I do not believe in any supernatural being that controls the world or defines our purpose.”

Eventually—probably after reading The God Delusion for the third time—I thought, “I can’t be the only one.”

Hiko-Tahuri: I remember thinking, “I can’t be the only Māori going through this.” So I started searching for books or articles written by Māori people about being both Māori and atheist. And I found absolutely nothing. There was no one—no one who had written publicly about being Māori and atheist.

Jacobsen: In your experience, had you at least come across others in real life—even if they had not formally written anything?

Hiko-Tahuri: I had met people who had loudly and proudly rejected Christianity and returned to belief in the traditional Māori gods—the atua. But I do not think I had ever met another openly Māori atheist—except for one woman I found on YouTube.

Her name was Nairi McCarthy. She was involved with the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists.

Jacobsen: Oh yes, yes—I know of her.

Hiko-Tahuri: You could have spoken with her a few years ago. Sadly, she passed away five or six years ago now.

She was the only one I had ever seen publicly acknowledge being Māori and atheist. And I thought, “Damn it. If I’m the only one with some writing skills and talk for a living, maybe I need to write this book.”

Jacobsen: Right.

Hiko-Tahuri: That is what led me to write it. I thought, “I know for certain I cannot be the only person who has come to this conclusion.”

So I turned to my community for support—and found nothing—no books, no articles. I thought, “Well, maybe I have to be the first. I’ll quietly write my story, upload it to the Internet, and maybe someone will find it.”

And that is precisely what I did.

Jacobsen: Was it terrifying?

Hiko-Tahuri: Oh yes—completely. I still remember the day I hit Publish. I put it on Smashwords. And I had no one to turn to—no reference point for what kind of response it might get.

But what I wanted was to leave a record. I’ve been to Māori funerals where they lied about the beliefs of the deceased—saying they were believers, that they loved God, when I knew for a fact they didn’t.

I didn’t want anyone to lie about me to my kids after I was gone. I needed something that told the truth about who I was. So I wrote the book.

It wasn’t to convince anyone. It was just my story—something people could find and know was real.

Jacobsen: How long did it take to write?

Hiko-Tahuri: About a year and a half. It’s a short book, but it took me that long to work through it.

Jacobsen: And the word count?

Hiko-Tahuri: Around sixteen or seventeen thousand words.

Jacobsen: So, roughly a thousand words a month?

Hiko-Tahuri: Yes—about that. I took my time with it.

Jacobsen: That must have been a difficult thing to do. We should get into that part because if someone stumbles across this ten years from now, it could be helpful to them.

What was the tension you felt when you realized, “Oh, shit—I don’t believe any of this anymore”?

Hiko-Tahuri: Yeah. I love my community. I love my people. I love our ceremonies. I love the familial nature of it all—the shared values, the collective spirit.

But I couldn’t believe that there were only seventy children of Rangi and Papa or that everything came from Te Kore—the void of nothingness. I couldn’t hold that belief anymore.

And that realization… it was jarring. “What do I do now?” It does suck. But I also knew I could not stay silent. I could not pretend I wasn’t having these thoughts or deny the conclusions I was reaching.

Jacobsen: That must have been a real internal conflict.

Hiko-Tahuri: It was—a deeply personal one. Part of me thought, “If you just keep quiet, you’ll be fine. You don’t have to believe—you can go your own way and avoid the conflict.”

That was tempting. It would have been easier. But I also knew that if someone asked me directly, I wouldn’t lie. I’d say, “No, I don’t believe in that.”

So, part of the thinking behind the book was: If I write this down, I won’t have to explain myself repeatedly. I can point people to it.

That felt honest. It meant I wasn’t lying or hiding anymore, either.

Jacobsen: After you published it, was the reaction proportional to the emotional weight you carried? Or was it mostly internal?

Hiko-Tahuri: Oh, it was all internal. The fear, the anxiety—it was mostly in my head.

Jacobsen: How common do you think that experience is? Do you think there’s a quiet wave of Māori atheists—or what I sometimes call “atheism-lite,” meaning agnostics—people who live by humanist principles but are afraid to come out and say they don’t believe in a deity?

People who think they’ll face judgment when, in fact, most people are too busy trying not to check Elon Musk or Donald Trump’s Twitter feed?

Hiko-Tahuri: [Laughs] Yes, right?

There’s a number of us out there. I wouldn’t call it a wave just yet, but there are certainly people wondering, “How do I tell my parents I don’t believe in God anymore?” That kind of question is very real. It’s hard to quantify, of course. But the reaction to the book was primarily positive. People were curious.

One of my cousins—his whole branch of the family is very religious—he reached out to me after reading it and said, “What? I’ve been thinking like that my whole life. I didn’t know that’s what it was called—being an atheist.”

Jacobsen: That is such a simple statement. But it carries so much emotional baggage for no good reason.

It’s fascinating. I’ve heard everything—from people being jailed or harassed for their beliefs to professional consequences to, on the other end of the spectrum, people gaining fame or recognition for speaking out—like the Daniel Dennetts and Sam Harrises of the world.

Hiko-Tahuri: So, I don’t avoid things. I go to gatherings because it’s about family first—and that’s always been my attitude. Family is family.

You put family above what individuals believe. That’s how my religious family treats me, too—my cousins and uncles. A good example: Seven of my closest cousins were wearing religious robes at a recent funeral, but we still talked and connected. The spiritual stuff was put aside because we’re family first.

I’m lucky that way. But it’s also a wider New Zealand attitude—family comes before anything else.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for A Further Inquiry. He is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

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