Maui John Mitchell is Ngāti Tama/Te Atiawa from Mōhua (Golden Bay). His great-great-great-grandmother’s brother is one of Coates’s subjects. John has been Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Canterbury, Warden of the Outward Bound School at Anakiwa, and active in many Māori organisations and issues including  Whakatū Marae, Ngāti Tama Iwi Trust, Wakatū Incorporation, Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, and the Foreshore and Seabed Movement.

Hilary Anne Mitchell is a West Coaster who has been a secondary school teacher, a Nelson City Councillor, a Commissioner appointed by local authorities to hear consent applications, board member of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and Nelson Tasman Heritage Trust, and involved in community organisations, especially those concerned with women and employment.

Together John and Hilary have operated Mitchell Research since 1985. Over 35 years they have completed hundreds of studies, reports and briefs of evidence on a wide range of topics, including for hearings of the Māori Land Court, Environment Court, High Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal. They have published the four-volume series Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka: A History of Māori of Nelson and Marlborough, which has won a number of awards.