Taiāpure are local fisheries and are governed by a local management committee.  Taiāpure were questionably created to give Māori greater involvement in the management of their fisheries as an expression of honouring the Treaty of Waitangi.  To date, there have been a number of criticisms raised about the taiāpure process. The general aim of the paper is to discursively analyse the taiāpure process, using Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki (hapū of Ngāi Tahu iwi that centres on Karitane, South Island, New Zealand) as the example.  Norman Fairclough’s (1992) version of critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used as the overarching methodology.  The Kati Huirapa ki Puketeraki taiāpure proposal was the text that was analysed. The main findings of the paper were that in order to be successful, applicants must subscribe to the contradictory discourses of indigenous knowledge and non-indigenous institutional discourse.  Arguably the taiāpure proposal process is an example of the Gramscian notion of hegemony and in fact lends further to the marginalisation of Māori rather than empowerment.  Future research needs to explore the prevalent discourses in other texts such as: successful and unsuccessful taiāpure proposals; public submissions; personal interview transcripts and; newspaper articles relating to taiāpure.