Inez White Faitala

2023 Cohort

Pronouns: she/her

Inez has dinner table conversations with her children to normalise homeownership and wealth in their whakapapa, and shares her story with her people on social media to support others to do the same.

Inez (Te Arawa, Ngāti Porou, Tainui) is currently located in Rotorua, Aotearoa. Inez graduated from RMIT University in 2011 and became a practising valuer throughout Victoria and Tasmania. Inspired by Eddie Mabo and the Mabo Case of land ownership Inez moved home to Aotearoa and started working for valuation firms investigating ways Māori can maintain sovereignty in land through a modern construct such as home ownership. In order to address a knowledge gap, she saw in Māori communities Inez started her own business; Indigenuity Limited, with the idea of demystifying homeownership for Māori families on general and Māori land.

Rotorua is Inez’s home, and she was raised as a Te Arawa women. She is also Tainui and Ngaati Porou. Inez’s parents were raised on their whenua Maori (ancestral native land) in the paa. Inez is the first generation to grow up outside of the paa life. Her tamariki (children) are uri of Maori, Moriori, Niue and Atiu whakapapa and seeing them grow up empowered in their own homes on their land makes her happy. Tino Rangatiratanga can be having safe, warm, calm homes. Inez started her career as a property valuer in 2006 in Australia and now specialises in customary land, valuation of marae, Maori homeownership and is part of a team building an iwi led lender (one day a bank).

“My goal is that we see a future where our mokopuna will not be tenants on our own land. That is our rongoaa.”

Social change work

Inez coaches whaanau Maori to be successful in buying their first homes, supporting them to buy back their whenua, a quarter acre at a time.