The Ngāti Moki Trophy for Māori Leadership is awarded to a person who has shown considerable Māori leadership at Lincoln University and commitment to Māori development either as a student, graduate, staff member or associate of the University. It was presented to Neil Challenger in 2013. Neil is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Landscape Architecture and started teaching at Lincoln University in 1993, in part to take the University’s teaching and research into the community.

The photo and following text is from The SoLA Blog. On Monday 27th May 2013, Neil Challenger was awarded the Ngati Moki Trophy for Maori leadership by kaumatua (elders) from Ngati Moki and Ngati Ruahikihiki (the local subtribe). This was a very pleasing acknowledgement of his long term engagement with the Maori community through a long list of student design projects that have taken him and at least 400 students as far north as Auckland (Okahu Bay for Ngati Whatua), as far south as Bruce Bay (Marae design for Makawhio) and to eighteen places in between. For the ropu he has worked with, to quote from the citation, this has “…distilled visions of their hopes and their moemoea (aspirations) for their lands and their people. You act as a dream-catcher. For many of these groups your work provides them with a direction that guides their thinking; sometimes, because the designs become preliminary templates; and sometimes because they joyously describe the potential for kaupapa Maori to be powerful and vigorous to people worn down by their battles.”