ABSTRACT
Maori communities today have more leaders and more kinds of leaders than in pre-European times. Except on the East Coast where women are equally eligible, rural Maoris still look to the first-born males in the senior lines of descent in the community as their ‘proper’ leaders, but they accept others for particular purposes and sometimes in general if the ‘proper’ leaders lack capacity or training. The cities offer plenty of opportunities for the able and well qualified to rise to the top, regardless of descent.
