[1] Her mother Penelope Brough-Robertson was Pākehā of Scottish descent and was a nurse at National Women's Hospital.

[2] Her father Tame / Tom Mutu was brought up in the Northern Wairoa outside Dargaville and was Māori affiliating with Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua, all iwi from the Northland Region of New Zealand.

[3][4] Her doctoral thesis was titled Aspects of the structure of the Ùa Pou dialect of the Marquesan language.

[9] She is chairperson of Matike Mai Aotearoa: The Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation, convened by Moana Jackson,[10] and chairperson of the Aotearoa Independent Monitoring Mechanism which monitors New Zealand's compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

[12] From 2009 to 2015 Mutu was a member the editorial board of AlterNative - A Journal of Indigenous Scholarship.