Tahuri Whenua Hui-a-tau, AGM, Porangahau

Another great Tahuri Whenua hui, the National Vegetable Growers Collective going from strength to strength, this time spreading the word to Porangahau.

Kim taking a soil sample in her garden under the tutelage of Moana Puha.

I arrived on the Friday before with Uncle Jim Cunningham, one of our kaumatua. Hosted by Aramanu and Paora Ropiha, word was heard of 20 koura, and Aramanu baked a banana cake for morning tea. Okay, she had to bake another one (iced in the morning) bu7t these things have a way of disappearing...

Aramanu has of course been instrumental in establishing Aunty's Gardens, and she presented on that to us, including T-shirts, badges and bags.

The korero regarding Te Wheke begins with the three hearts of the Octopus, representing the foundation principles for Aunty’s Garden: Whakapapa, Tikanga/Manakitanga, Ohaoha. The eight kawai or tentacles represent the various dimensions a grower may choose to apply in relation to their whenua and produce: Mana ahua ake, Mauri, Aoturoa, Whanaungatanga, Hinengaro, Wairua, Whatumanawa, Ha, Taonga Tukuiho.

Hanui Lawrence, one of Auntys' Gardens stalwarts.


Me, Te Raetihi, Beach, Porangahau (I know the quality of the pix - genetic and temporal failings aside - failings seems lower than a year ago but I've started taking pix wqith my cheapo Smart-phone and kinda like the effects. Sorta low-res down on the rez...

WAI 262 (finally) released...

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the dark... I suppose it was a matter of time, and I'm wrapped as it gives MAST 603, one of the paper I'm teaching at Lincoln University this year) a fascinating focus. (Just catching the mocking, sneering tone of two Pakeha commentators on t.v.; Fran O'Sullivan just used the term 'brown-mail'. Oh well. I'll 'get over it', when they get hard, get real, and get honest!).

Trouble is, damn thing is so big, and I'm so old school I need hard copy so I can scrawl and circle and throw around ?'s and !'s. We're gonna be a long time digesting this. At first cut it does seem so bloody conciliatory!

Hmmmm, some concerns starting to come through, mars 2 earth

And a pity that Murray Parsons passed away before its release. I've tried to find some web records of the first hui (held in 1988 at Rehua) but have only found an old, 1990, NZ Botanical Society newsletter that refers to it...

Murray Parsons. Botanist, Ngati Kahungunu (ki Wairarapa). Died 10 May 2011, aged just 69.

But the report itself starts with a remarkably positive statement from the Minister of Maori Affairs, expaling the reports name, Ko tenei Aotearoa' can mean "‘This is Aotearoa’ or ‘This is New Zealand’, or both. The ambiguity is intentional: a reminder, if one is needed, that Aotearoa and New Zealand must be able to co-exist in the same space."

Nice.

And then: "New Zealand sits poised at a crossroads both in race relations and on our long quest for a mature sense of national identity. These issues are not just important in themselves; they impact on wider questions of economic growth and social cohesion. We are propelled here by many factors: the enormous progress that has been made toward the settlement of historical Treaty claims and the resulting reincarnation of tribes as serious players in our economic, political, social, and cultural fabric; continuing growth in the Māori population and the seemingly intractable social and economic disparity between that community and the rest of New Zealand; the Māori cultural ‘renaissance’ and the rise of Māori creativity in the arts, music, and literature contrasted with ongoing cultural loss; and the extraordinary increase in wider cultural diversity in New Zealand through immigration over the last 30 years."

And then, stretching the standard metaphor for such things (kia ora Ropata Johnson: "A crossroads in history offers choices. The Wai 262 claimants really asked which of the many possible paths into the future New Zealand should now choose, and in this report we provide an answer based on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi."


Just an overview then, clipped from the Waitangi website:
Chapter 1 looks at Māori arts and crafts, the works accumulated by our weavers, carvers, writers, musicians, artists, and others, framed by New Zealand’s intellectual property law, particularly copyright and trade marks.

Chapter 2 looks at the genetic and biological resources of 'flora and fauna' - the original moniker of this claim - which Māori have evolved intimate and long-standing relationships, and which are now of intense interest to scientists and researchers involved in bioprospecting, genetic modification, and intellectual property law, particularly patents and plant variety rights.

“Protecting taonga species and mātauranga Māori [Māori traditional knowledge] aids the survival of Māori culture itself. That is why…these things are important enough to justify protection in law.”
Ko Aotearoa Tēnei: Taumata Tuarua, Chapter 2

Chapter 3 RMA stuff.

Chapter 4 DoC stuff.

Chapter 5 focuses on te reo Māori

Chapter 6 considers Crown agencies regarding mātauranga Māori.

Chapter 7 examines rongoā Māori.

Chapter 8 addresses Crown’s policies on including Māori in the development of New Zealand’s position concerning international instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Potatoes galore

With the World Potato Congress just passed, held in my town of Christchurch, March 22-25, and autumn nights closing in, thoughts turn to warming, nutritious dishes like ... potatoes. Boiled, mashed, roasted, chipped, there's no denying the culinary versatility. We also know well the botanical diversity, although as this article in The Guardian tells, that diversity went through the bottleneck of European introduction with the resulting varieties still capable of impressing in their range of form, colour and taste.

The local Lincoln Fieldays was its usual riotous collection of farm machinery and farmers. New varieties of potato were on display such as the Purple heart above, and below in close up...

Physico-chemical and morphological characteristics of New Zealand Taewa (Maori potato) starches

The most common search terms that are coming up in the blog-counter are to do with Maori potatoes. Here's a paper, rather technical but interesting none-the-less, on the physico-chemical, morphological, thermal, pasting, textural, and retrogradation properties of the starches of Karuparera, Tutaekuri, Huakaroro, Moemoe were studied and compared with starch properties of a modem potato cultivar (Nadine). There are also a lot of searches for kamo kamo (and from around the globe...homesick Maori?!). I chose not to grow an kamo kamo this season, they take up a heck of a lot of space and I've reduced the total size of my vege plot anyway (the boys need more space to run like the wild things they are).

Anyway, I offer these two pictures of succulent kamo kamo.