The marae defended by flood walls: How mātauranga Māori can prepare us for the coming storm
Tuesday, 24 May 2022
Toitū te marae a Tāne-Mahuta, Toitū te marae a Tangaroa, Toitū te tangata.
If the land is well and the sea is well, the people will thrive.
Zak Horomia (Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Kahukuranui, Ngāti Hau) remembers when people could swim, fish and eel in the Uawa river.
He remembers when 40 families lived in Mangatuna and lush vegetable gardens peppered the landscape.
The time before heavy rain became an ever-present threat.
The effects of climate change are felt keenly by the people of Hinemaurea ki Mangatuna Marae, which lies about 10 kilometres north of Tolaga Bay on the East Coast.
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**
Sitting on a plastic chair in hi-vis orange work clothes, Horomia looks around at the place he cares for as chairperson.
This whenua holds a lot of history and could tell many stories.
“It used to be all flat here. We never had floodbanks and the concrete wall out there. Was just one big flat here right out to the creek,” says Horomia.
“Them days you know, we had rains. We may have 400mm in a month. We’re getting it in a day, overnight now. Hence why we had to build a wall around our marae.”
Installing the wall wasn’t an easy decision, and while it has provided protection, floodwaters still cause damage.
“We had a flood here in November … and sadly it went through our marae.”
It’s easy to understand why Horomia rushes here every time it starts to rain.
He’ll be at the marae all hours of the night, working to protect the wooden structures as much as he possibly can.
Stretching out both arms, Horomia draws a circle around him.
“This is a lagoon, eh. When the rain comes down, heavy rain, it just fills up in here.”
The marae has been fitted with an emergency pump that is supposed to trigger automatically, but recently it hasn’t been working so Horomia comes out to start it manually.
At some point, the conversation drifts to the awa (river), which used to be a key provider of kai to the people of Mangatuna.
Heavy rain has seen slash from forestry operations sweep into waterways making fishing virtually impossible.
“I do a bit of whitebaiting and sometimes I get in the river to set up a net and hello, there are logs in there stuck in the bank. There’s just heaps of wood in the riverbed.
“It was never like that growing up. We could walk those rivers, walk across the rivers without worrying about hitting snags or anything. Can’t even swim in them any more.”
Hinemaurea ki Mangatuna is just one of many marae dealing firsthand with the effects of climate change and the East Coast is just one of countless communities facing it head on.
As the battle against this seemingly unstoppable force continues, communities and researchers are looking at how mātauranga Māori can be harnessed to support the fight against climate change and protect Aotearoa for future generations.
Defining mātauranga Māori
In a literal sense, mātauranga Māori translates to Māori knowledge.
Dig a little deeper though, and you’ll discover a concept with many facets and layers.
Sandy Morrison (Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama ki te Tau Ihu, Te Arawa, Maniapoto) is an associate professor at the University of Waikato faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies.
She is also part of Vision Mātauranga for the Deep South Challenge and on the steering group for the Antarctic Science Platform.
In the context of climate change, Morrison says mātauranga Māori encompasses knowledge while including things like kōrero tuku iho (stories of the past).
“It also includes what I say is ‘observing tohu’… so observing some of these changes that we’ve seen within our own environment, or ecosystems or our own territories,” she says.
“Whether they be indicators to do with water, whether they be indicators to do with fruit or plant growth or birdlife … it includes all of the observations and experiences that we have in our environmental encounters.”
Overall, mātauranga Māori is many things brought together as a body of knowledge, handed down from previous generations and built on by the generations of today.
“But for me, you can’t really talk about mātauranga Māori unless you also highlight the value of te reo Māori,” says Morrison.
Māori words are often used to explain the environment, she says, and so mātauranga needs to be seen through the lens of te reo.
Then there’s the more invisible side, which includes values, principles and things like rāhui (temporary prohibition) and tapu (sacred).
Rāhui in particular is often used when working to protect a natural resource from harm.
For example, mana whenua in West Auckland placed one over the Waitakere Ranges in 2017 amid the alarming spread of kauri dieback.
Last year a rāhui was placed on Foveaux Strait following the discovery of the parasite Bonamia ostreae in wild oysters.
On Waitangi Day this year, a rāhui was laid by Ngāti Manuhiri kaumātua over the Hauraki Gulf and much of north Auckland’s east coast as concern grew over reducing scallop numbers.
“They all protect and regulate the way that we have interacted with our environment,” says Morrison.
Of course, climate change is a global issue and Morrison says it’s important to understand that no one knowledge system will be sufficient to meet the challenges.
Instead, we need to be drawing on a raft of different ideas and systems to solve the problem.
By virtue of the fact that Māori have occupied Aotearoa for generations, layers of knowledge have been built and accumulated through observation, analysis and the sheer need to survive.
“So just on that basis alone, mātauranga Māori must be part of the solution,” says Morrison.
“But mātauranga Māori also, I think, needs to sit alongside other knowledge systems.”
The latest chapter of colonisation
Dr Rhys Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is an Associate Professor of Māori Health at the University of Auckland.
Take one look at his Twitter feed and you’ll find he’s also a keen cyclist and climate advocate.
Jones believes mātauranga Māori has a huge role to play in the climate response, particularly when it comes to how climate change is viewed.
He says there needs to be a shift away from the view of climate change as simply a problem of too many emissions.
Climate change, says Jones, is about our relationship with the earth and everything else surrounding us.
“A lot of people, a lot of particularly indigenous scholars, talk about climate change as an intensification of colonialism and … the latest chapter in the process of colonisation,” he says.
“We can see how climate change is really intimately tied up with colonial, capitalist ways of engaging with the world … that sort of extractive way of exploiting the earth's natural resources for our own benefit.”
Jones says the current climate change response is sitting within that same frame of reference, constrained by colonial Western world views and knowledge systems.
In essence, the problem is being tackled through the same way of thinking that created it in the first place.
To achieve change, says Jones, the world needs to step away from the currently dominant way of thinking and into other knowledge systems and ways of viewing the world.
For Aotearoa, that means understanding climate change from the perspective of tangata whenua and the mātauranga they have cultivated.
It’s a hard question, but does Jones think all eco-warriors are ready to do that?
He chuckles quietly.
“There’s clearly a spectrum, you know, of people that are engaged in the environmental movement …”
On the one hand, he says, you have people who are receptive to indigenous ways of viewing the world, to drawing on mātauranga Māori and to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
On the other hand, people are still tied to Western and colonial ways of viewing environmentalism.
“One thing I was gonna say is that I think historically, environmental movements and climate campaigners have been … how would I put this? Sort of complicit in perpetuating some of the colonial power dynamics and things within the climate movement.
“So taking space where it should really be indigenous people speaking, you know, undermining and marginalising indigenous peoples and their knowledge and kind of perpetuating those sorts of inequities.”
Including mātauranga Māori in conversations about climate change is hugely important, says Jones.
“It really gets to the roots of some of the underlying problems that have led to the process that we now understand as climate change.
“Mātauranga Māori is, essentially if you boil it down, based on whakapapa and on connections between everything.”
That includes how people are connected to the earth and all living and nonliving things.
“What it then tries to do is help us to see how those relationships are really critical for a sustainable way of living on the planet, and so it gets us to think about what are the ways of living on this whenua that allow us to live within the ethics of those relationships.
“I think what tends to happen in the mainstream climate space is that … we try to find a slightly greener way of doing what we’re currently doing,” says Jones.
Mātauranga Māori in action
Mātauranga Māori is already in action at Pourewa, a Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei garden in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Access to nutritious produce is under threat from climate change. A 2014 article in the New Zealand Medical Journal warns that increasing global food prices resulting from climate change will affect a substantial amount of local and imported staples – hampering the ability of some groups to access nutritious foods.
On a global scale, the IPCC has warned climate change could cause cereal prices to rise as much as 29% by 2050.
It says while increased levels of carbon dioxide are projected to benefit crop productivity at lower temperature increases, they’re also likely to decrease nutritional values.
That is where initiatives like Pourewa provide a solution.
It’s a 20-minute drive from the Auckland CBD, but the garden (which sits on a grassy slope overlooking the water) feels like a world away.
Much of the work here is done under the watchful eye of Rob Small (Ngāpuhi) who curated and designed the garden.
Affectionately known as Matua Rob, Small is quick to point out he doesn’t hail from Ngāti Whātua, viewing himself as merely a vessel for the iwi inspiration that fills Pourewa.
“Primarily this community garden, the vegetable garden here, was created so that we could give good, organic, wholesome food to the whānau of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei who own this land.”
At Pourewa, the principles of hua parakore are followed – basically Māori organic gardening, Small explains.
Artificial chemicals and sprays are nowhere to be found because if the food is healthy, the people are healthy.
When it comes to harvesting and planting, Small and his team look to the maramataka or the Māori lunar calendar.
“We look at the maramataka every day and we only plant on suitable days, so Tangaroa is a really good period when we do quite a bit of planting,” he says.
“There was a specific day when kūmara were planted, just because that was the perfect day and the perfect month.
“Other days when the maramataka isn’t good … we might be weeding, we might be preparing beds, we could be doing any range of things.”
For long term in-ground crops like potato and kūmara, harvesting takes place only on significant maramataka days.
The physical design of the garden heavily incorporates mātauranga Māori and the maramataka as well.
Because mātauranga Māori was developed with no written language, the knowledge was passed down orally, says Small.
“Those things that people learnt, which became their science and is their science today.
“Those things are what I incorporated into the design, so I wanted it to be a place where we could anchor objects … that would allow a kaumātua to come and talk about that mātauranga and why that was important, how they understood their world.”
Understanding mātauranga around where the sun sits in the sky is also important to Small.
“Our tūpuna [ancestors] understood the day by the phase of the moon, where it was at night. They understood the month by where the sun rose,” he says.
“Clearly they recognised the sun rose very much towards the southeast in the middle of summer and the northeast in the middle of winter.
“So the mātauranga that goes with that is that Tama-nui-te-rā, the Sun, has two wives – he has a summer wife and a winter wife.
“Whether the wife gets sick of him or he gets sick of the wife is immaterial, he just graduates from his summer wife to his winter wife.”
At the end of the year, Matariki would re-emerge, with the stars indicating different things including whether the following year would bring a good harvest.
“Their whole calendar was based on observation, but it was clearly very astute to the point that they did understand that in general terms, on certain moon phases, nearly everybody felt one way,” says Small.
Out of an abundance of caution, he explains, Māori were extremely careful with things they depended on for survival and made sure to only interact with those things when the energy was right – something that happens at Pourewa today.
Combining the knowledge
Shaun Awatere (Ngāti Porou) is a researcher with Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.
He agrees that mātauranga Māori should be included in climate change responses, primarily due to obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Hapū and iwi have a role to play in the management of natural resources, says Awatere, especially when it comes to providing solutions that will ensure community resilience.
“Oftentimes the solutions for climate adaptation and climate resilience come from more localised types of approaches.”
A one-size-fits all approach will only go so far, he says.
It can be good at a national level for providing guidance, but lacking when applied to specific regions.
For example, Awatere says specific flood protection strategies for the West Coast would look different to those for Te Tairāwhiti (on the East Coast) given things like geographic differences and causes of flooding.
Additionally, hapū and iwi often hold unique stories tied up with landscapes surrounding them, Awatere explains.
“It’s generally a recognition that the ecosystems themselves are unique to those areas,” he says.
The way people interact with those ecosystems is also unique depending on the type of landscape they inhabit, whether it be mountainous, coastal, forested, the list goes on.
Awatere says the different types of plants and animals within those ecosystems will be reflected in the mātauranga that is endemic to those areas.
When applied in practical terms to something like climate change, it’s important to remember that mātauranga Māori is multi-faceted.
“Mātauranga Māori is oftentimes referred to as the knowledge that is applied to the local ecosystems, but mātauranga Māori also has aspects that include ethics and principles,” says Awatere.
That can include things like kaitiakitanga (guardianship and protection) manaakitanga (caring for others and the environment) and whanaungatanga (connectedness), paired with concepts like mana.
Then there is the intimate knowledge of ecosystems Māori have developed throughout centuries applied from the Pacific Islands.
“I’m referring to the maramataka,” says Awatere.
“So that’s where Māori triangulated a productive, ecological model that looked at the linkages between the lunar movements, ecological processes within the local ecosystems, along with the astronomical movements as well.”
That type of information is incredibly useful for application in climate adaptation plans, says Awatere.
For example, if people want to know what kind of plant should be put in a riparian zone or the best type of tree to use in erosion control they might look to the maramataka alongside modern ecological knowledge to guide them on when, where and what to plant.
“And then I know that there are people and there are local ecosystems who have been adapting their local maramataka and ecological knowledge because of climate change.”
Climate change has made seasons shift and planting time zones grow or reduce, says Awatere.
With all this in mind, Awatere believes there is a real value in bringing together ancient and local knowledge with modern ecological knowledge to address threats like climate change.
“Ecology itself recognises that there are certain shared processes for how plants function, dependent upon the attributes or the conditions of their environment and the attributes of the soil,” he says.
“When you combine that type of general knowledge from a scientific perspective, to an applied approach when implementing a solution, it is really important to be able to ‘ground truth’ it or test it with local knowledge.”
Awatere says models tested at a local level often pick up nuances that wouldn’t otherwise be identified.
It also encourages a more inclusive approach, rather than one where the Government simply comes in and dictates what should happen.
“I think that’s the intention behind a lot of the approaches for co-governance … trying to be more inclusive, to get a broader range, a diverse range of ideas because the current systems aren’t working in terms of…how we are extracting and utilising our resources,” says Awatere.
There is some good work going on in this space, he says, notably with the Ministry for the Environment’s Draft National Adaptation Plan which aims to help minimise the harmful impacts of climate change.
Mentioned in that plan is The Rauora Framework, which was developed by Ihirangi, the operational arm of the Climate Lead for the National Iwi Chairs Forum.
The framework combines Māori cultural values and principles to form an indigenous approach to climate change.
“The Rauora Framework is a holistic approach to climate change, where enduring and unbroken relations between Papatūānuku (earth mother) and Ranginui (sky father) and beyond inform the relationships among us, with others and with the environment,” states the Draft National Adaptation plan.
“The enactment of these relationships (whakapapa) through tiers and intersections are associated with mana, tapu and noa.”
Towards the end of Shaun Awatere’s interview, talk turns to the countless marae under threat from climate change.
Soon, he warns, some iwi and hapū may need to have the difficult conversation about moving marae and urupā (burial grounds) as extreme weather events become more frequent and intense.
“Which means that those areas that are vulnerable to flooding will experience the impacts from extreme precipitation more frequently, to the point where they will have to seriously consider relocation of marae and urupā or risk those assets becoming damaged or uninsurable,” says Awatere.
It’s not a new phenomenon though, as Awatere says there are stories from the past revealing how adaptive and resilient our ancestors were, including when they relocated precious taonga like marae.
Moving Mangatuna
Back on the East Coast, Zak Horomia worries that the people of Hinemaurea ki Mangatuna Marae may need to have one of those hard conversations in the future.
The floods are getting worse and worse, he says, and the most recent one in March was also one of the most severe.
Surf lifesavers in an IRB ended up having to drop Horomia off at the gates, before moving on to evacuate families in the surrounding areas.
Weather like this isn’t over yet, he states flatly.
”It’s a big worry. A big worry.”
Horomia is right of course. The rains will probably keep coming, the rivers will continue filling up with forestry slash.
But there is a ray of hope.
Climate change has a very powerful foe in the experts and advocates fighting it here and mātauranga Māori adds a knowledge system with a unique Aotearoa perspective to their toolbox.