Maliq was born in the Northern Water Tribe sometime during the last half of the Hundred Year War. Some time later, he and Malina moved to the Earth Kingdom, where he attended Ba Sing Se University. By the time they moved to the Southern Water Tribe, they had spent more time in the Earth Kingdom than they had in the North Pole. When they arrived in the South Pole, they became the leaders of the Southern Restoration Project. Under Hakoda's supervision, they began the process of modernizing the tribe by creating newer, larger buildings, intended to show the other nations that the tribe was keeping pace with the post-war being made by the rest of the world.