Monday Friday 28th

Environment Aotearoa 1
kaitiakitanga;Merata Kawharu, an important voice
Merata Kawharu discusses the environment as a marae locale (Kawharu in Selby, Moore and Mullholland 2010: 221- 239). Kawharu gives an account of kaitiakitanga that considers time and space. The environment is seen as an ancestral landscape that encapsulates sites of significance.
Throughout her paper there is an attention to mana whenua. There is also an attention to terms and concepts that make her marae locale distinctive. She talks about walking backwards into the future.
Kawharu emphasises that this is an orally based culture. There is, in Maori society, she suggests, a sophistication of metaphors about economic, political and spiritual relationships with land. So much of this assertion depends on familiarity with the reo, especially key words in a lexicon shared by people who might not actually speak Maori but know these words (Kawharu does not discuss language use to any great extent). A lexicon is involved beginning with tiaki and then on to kaitiaki, manaaki, atawhai and other words (cf Cleave 1979, Pocock, 1967 Goldsmith 2003). There are matters of oral performance and understanding and these might be considered as functional or extended.
Kawharu is talking about a triangle of people, environment and identity. She uses whakatauki to illustrate her points;
ka mimiti te puna i Taumaarere
ka toto te puna i Hokianga
ka toto te puna i Taumaarere
ka mimiti te puna i Hokianga
When the fountain empties in Taumaarere
The fountain of Hokianga is full
When the fountain of Taumaarere is full
The fountain of Hokianga is empty

or

Tamaki kaainga ika me nga wheua katoa
Tamaki where fish, bones and all are consumed

Kawharu sets out a model with dimensions of space, time and whakapapa with korero, tapuwae (footprints) and whenua in the middle. She talks about the tapuwae as the footprint of the iwi and talks about the kin group’s estate. Kawharu does not mention it but there is another meaning to tapuwae as a chant of movement to ensure speed. A tapuwae is a chant referring to speed in flight or pursuit. The footprint, cultural or otherwise may be fluid as well as stationary.

She suggests that Kaitiakitanga is not simply an environmental ethic but rather a socio-environmental ethic. It is about relationships between humans and the environment (ibid 2010:227).
Kaitiakitanga finds continuity in Maori kin based communities because it weaves together ancestral, environmental and social threads of identity, purpose and practice.
The environment may be considered as an extension of all that marae symbolise and vice versa, marae are extensions of a wider community. Kawharu talks about the marae as a person and sets out a model with dimensions of divine principles-ira atua and human principles- ira tangata. The environment as a marae locale contains a series of cultural reference points. Kawharu quotes Sir James Henare saying;
When I look at these landscapes I see my ancestors walking back to me.
With regard to kaitiakitanga Kawharu speaks of creative potential. The storytelling aspect of creativity is crucial. Maori heritage is the kind of experience and consciousness that is created and maintained through interactions with places of Maori heritage.
Kawharu sets out some present challenges such as re-establishing mana whenua and a cultural footprint in a multicultural society, re-affirming credible tribal leadership, re-learning traditional knowledge and values and applying them (such as through the arts of formal speech making, carving and tukutuku and reviving traditional knowledge among rangatahi).
The space of the city would seem to be problematic.
There is a real gap between the work of Merata Kawharu and the work of Stokes and Barton in the New Zealand Herald in 2006 and 2007 on the Ngati Whatua settlement. Stokes and Barton show how difficult, impossible almost, the city situation is in the claiming process. They show how, in the intense pressure of the city, historians take sides, important documents are lost and leadership issues arise. This produces a stalemate which, the present writer would argue, amounts to a lock out of the locals in their own city.

Neocosmos (2003) has written of the lock out of the poor and the foreign and the definition of people as official citizens or not in the context of the cities of Southern Africa. It seems hard not to read Barton's work in particular and begin to make comparisons.
Merata Kawharu (2010:235-6) writes of a disconnection between the marae locale and the environment. This is a break in oral reference, a break in the storytelling of the locale, a break that strips out and warps the richness of the culture. This relates to several other pieces in the collection of Kaitiaki in particular those by Veronica Tawhai and Rachel Selby and Pataka Moore. Tawhai’s consideration of rawaho shows this disconnection between marae locale and the environment as it shows a disconnect between history and geography.

The above is from 'Land by Water; a walk through some conversations,' an essay in 'Aotearoa, Papers of Contest' 2010 by Peter Cleave. This book is available through Wheelers Books, Auckland



February 28 Mon
Rangitaanenuirawa
January 3 Mon
Rangitaanenuirawa
Kaupapa korero mo te ra nei
Nga mahi ki Tanenuiarangi o Manawatu Incorporated
Rangahau
He korero mo tena mahi, tena ranei e kitea nei ki TMI.
Subject of the day
Activities at TMI
Analysis
A section by section look at work done at TMI.
www.rangitaane.iwi.nz/ -