About
Beau MacKey was born in Gisborne, Aotearoa New Zealand, on October 9, 1983, as a twin. His father named him Beau after Beauregard “Bo” Duke from the American television series The Dukes of Hazzard. From the beginning, his life would be shaped by identity, ancestry, struggle, sport, fatherhood, spirituality, philosophy, and the search for meaning.
Beau’s identity is deeply rooted in whakapapa. For over seventeen years, he has documented his Māori and Scottish ancestral lines, tracing connections across Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Ngāti Konohi, Ngāi Tai, Whakatōhea, Te Whānau a Apanui, Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha, Ngāti Whakaue, and Te Arawa. Through his paternal grandfather, Enoka MacKey, he connects to the East Coast tribes of Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, and Ngāti Konohi, with lines reaching back to Paikea, Porourangi, Konohi, Rawiri Te Eke-tu-o-te-Rangi, and Rutene Te Eke (Brother of Hirini Te Kani, whom succeeded Te Kani-a-Takirau as Paramount Chief of Te Tairawhiti). Te Kani-a-Takirau descended from the most senior genealogical lines of the Tairāwhiti tribes. Before Pōtatau Te Wherowhero was approached to become the first Māori King, the Kīngitanga leaders first went to Te Kani-a-Takirau because of his great mana, whakapapa, and standing among Māori. However, Te Kani-a-Takirau declined the position, stating that his authority belonged to his own people and whenua of Tairāwhiti.
Rutene Kiwara Te Eke's testimony:
“The land belonged to Waho-o-te-rangi, who was a chief, and the people under him were very numerous... When he died, authority descended to Hinematioro... then to Te Kani-a-Takirau… when he died, it was ours, for we are his children.”
Through his maternal grandfather, Reverend Charles Brown Shortland, Beau descends from the paramount Ngāti Hine chieftains Hoterene Paraone Kawiti and Maihi Paraone Kawiti, the grandson and son of Te Ruki Kawiti, the paramount chief of Ngāti Hine who led his people against the British during the Northern War. Reverend Charles Brown Shortland was a Māori Anglican minister and personal chaplain to Māori King Korokī. Through his maternal grandmother, Beau is also connected to Ngāti Hine, Te Uri Taniwha, Ngāti Whakaue, and Te Arawa.
As a child, Beau suffered a severe burn to the back of his head in an accident involving a fireplace. He later came to see this event as one of the formative experiences of his life. His father introduced him to rugby league at the age of five, which he played until he was thirteen. His passion for basketball began through collecting basketball cards and soon became one of the central disciplines of his youth.
At age fifteen, while attending a Tall Blacks basketball camp, Beau was awarded Most Valuable Player after stealing the ball five times from Dillon Boucher, one of the most decorated players in Australasian basketball history. In 1999 and 2000, he played for Whangārei Boys’ High School’s First Basketball Team, and in 2000 he also played for the First XV Rugby Team. That same year, he was named Co-High School Basketball Player of the Year alongside his twin brother. After secondary school, he studied a Diploma in Sports and Leisure in 2001.
Beau went on to represent Northland basketball for nearly two decades. In 2003, he made the National Premier Men’s Northland Basketball Team. In 2004, he was the only player selected from Northland for a National Basketball Tournament Team to Vanuatu, where he started for the side. He was later scouted by the Taranaki Mountain Airs and trialed for the Auckland Stars under coaches Kenny Stone and Merv Tait. Although a professional contract did not eventuate due to mismanagement, sport gave Beau discipline, resilience, leadership, and a lifelong understanding of performance under pressure.
In 2005, Beau’s life changed when he met the mother of his two sons, who were born in 2007 and 2008. After their separation, he secured shared care as a solo father. Fatherhood became one of the most important responsibilities of his life and deepened his pursuit of spirituality, philosophy, and self-discipline.
In 2010, Beau played for the Northland Suns. He later founded and captained the Raumanga Royals, leading the team to victory in the inaugural Northland Basketball Competition in 2011. After stepping away from basketball, he transitioned into club rugby league and played two seasons for the Hora Hora Broncos. He was offered an opportunity to trial for the Northland Swords Rugby League Team but declined.
In 2015, Beau entered a relationship that led him overseas. His time in Europe included travel through Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, France, and beyond. During this period, he attended a public event featuring the Dalai Lama in Frankfurt, performed a solo haka in Berlin’s Mauer Park, sought counsel from a Mongolian shaman in Switzerland, and witnessed life among the homeless in Paris. These experiences expanded his philosophical and spiritual outlook and exposed him to both beauty and suffering across different cultures.
Upon returning to New Zealand, Beau experienced homelessness after leaving his residence due to his flat mates methamphetamine drug use in the household. He lived in a tent and in his mother’s car while battling depression. While working as a traffic controller and labourer, he eventually bought a van and adopted a nomadic lifestyle. He lived from his van, trained at the gym, travelled to the coast, and regularly returned to ancestral homelands. During this period, he worked at Marsden Point Oil Refinery and later for a scaffolding company, while continuing to endure severe personal and emotional hardship.
At the onset of the COVID-19 lockdowns, a journey to Cape Reinga became the beginning of a profound turning point. After an unexpected profound incident on Ninety Mile Beach, Beau walked inland for hours and encountered wild horses. Following this experience Beau spent five months living alone in nature. It was a period of isolation, survival, spiritual searching, and psychological crisis. He endured four consecutive nights exposed to winter conditions with no clothes on and later described this time as transformative.
Following this period, Beau experienced serious mental health challenges and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis. He was admitted to mental health facilities multiple times and had several interactions with police during episodes of distress. Rather than allowing these experiences to define him, Beau came to understand them as part of a deeper journey through suffering, identity, breakdown, survival, and rebuilding.
Since 2012, Beau has immersed himself in philosophy, spirituality, whakapapa, and historical research. His work is grounded not only in books and archives, but in lived experience. He writes from the place where ancestry, hardship, responsibility, and transformation meet. His studies have focused on Māori history, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, He Whakaputanga, constitutional history, genealogy, philosophy, and the human search for meaning.
Beau has also trained in traditional Māori cultural practices, including Ngā Mahi Tū Taua, Māori martial arts. He completed Te Pōkaitahi Ngā Mahi Tū Taua at NorthTec and later achieved a Certificate in Tū Taua, Level 4, through Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, completing 120 credits with 100 percent achievement. This training deepened his understanding of discipline, tikanga, Māori knowledge systems, and cultural continuity.
Today, Beau is an author, historian, genealogist, philosopher, and father. His writing spans history, biography, spirituality, philosophy, and Indigenous identity. He is the author of 9 Lives of Wisdom and The British Monarch, Māori Chiefs and Sub-Tribes of New Zealand. He has also published and curated Ancient and Modern Philosophers and Great Thinkers: Wisdom and Quotes Book 1 and Book 2, as well as Māori Life: A Century in New Zealand Society, preserving and presenting the work of his grandfather, Reverend Charles Brown Shortland.
His research has been formally archived in the British Museum Anthropology Library, recognising his contribution to New Zealand’s constitutional history, Māori sovereignty, whakapapa, and historical interpretation.
Across all of Beau’s work is one central pursuit: to understand what remains of a person when identity is stripped away, and how truth is formed through suffering, responsibility, ancestry, discipline, and change. His life and writing are not shaped by theory alone, but by experience — by the ongoing attempt to turn pain into wisdom, survival into meaning, and whakapapa into a living source of strength.
