Scorched earth policy...

The ashes around the old man Tane Mahuta getting more e-play. So old (at 2,500 years) he now has the scattering of people's ashes, let alone the gentle rotting bodies of his close whanaunga.

LandCare, fronting the science, as I said below, et cetera et cetera.

Collaboration with Maori should be easier, given the current (party) political climate. But this is trumped by old skool political-economic numbers: yunno its tough when PAKEHA are broke!

Meanwhile the big block @ Te Whare Wananga o Aorangi - Forbes - is wrapped in white plastic. I'm on the third floor, or as we like to say, the pancake palace (the lower floors always squish, right?).



Like some Swiss-French art installation, or an island wrapped in cloth.



On the subject of trees, a beautiful portfolio by Cedric Pollet.



Positive I-ration.

Tane Mahuta and the scattering of ashes

An interesting news item on concerns for Tane Mahuta. But TVNZ can't half twist a story! Essentially two separate issues - the scattering of cremated remains and the spread of Kauri Dieback disease - are combined yet the complexities are barely outlined. On the one hand, kaumatua are concerned that people are risking a cultural despoilment of Tane Mahuta by the remains of their loved ones being dropped on a wahi tapu, a sacred site. And LandCare scientists are worried about the ongoing effects of Phytophthora taxon Agathis (PTA) which has been connected to yellowing foliage, loss of leaves, canopy thinning and dead branches. Affected Kauri can bleed resin through lesions. This can extend to roots and even girdle the trunk as ‘collar rot', killing trees of all ages.


Bleeding resin.

But where and how exactly are faith and reason joining forces in this debate, given there are two different issues? The kaumatua has quite different concerns than the scientist, although both can, Lorax like, speak for the trees! The disease itself was identified in April, 2008. Its closest relative is a chestnut pathogen from Korea (Phytophthora katsurae). The assumption is that PTA is an introduced pathogen but nothing is known about this particular species overseas.

The concern for mana whenua, the people who whakapapa to the area, is that their sacred sites are being trampled on by ignorant (albeit grieving) people who are perhaps following the wishes of their loved departed ones. TVNZ seems incapable of examining what is a complex and difficult subject in anyway that credits either faith or reason.




Warning sign...

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.

Ru Whenua Research: Lincoln Uni funds investigation into Maori networks of resilience through the earthquakes

The scale of damage from the recent and ongoing earthquakes centred in and around Ōtautahi has challenged all networks in the city at a time when many individuals and communities were already under severe economic pressure. In such times, Māori have historically drawn on traditional institutions such as whānau, marae, hapū, and iwi for support. What has worked and what has failed are fundamental questions as other communities (Māori and non-Māori) will likely suffer similarly disastrous events in the future.

A broad approach is needed to account for how people have been affected by the earthquakes, and how and why they respond as they do. Lincoln has funded a small project that investigates the role of Maori-centric networks in supporting Maori and non-Maori in the aftermath of the recent and ongoing earthquakes. Three disciplines provide the intellectual foundations of ascertaining Maori cultural and economic resilience: geography (Dr. Lambert) and community development (Melanie Shadbolt); and two dimensions of environmental hazards: geological (Dr. Black) and eco-toxicological (Dr. Ataria). University ethics approval is currently in process. The project will draw on the team's respective skills to gather and interpret both qualitative data (narrating the personal, professional, and institutional experiences of key actors in responding to the earthquakes) and quantitative data (describing the geo/eco contexts of affected Māori communities).


Photo by Mark Lincoln

We're also hoping to collaborate with the University of Canterbury in a bigger project, currently being drafted and consulted on.


More maps, this time showing the G-forces.

Check out the flow of Tweets immediately following the Japanese earthquake.

Some important points from Grant Jacobs on the Sciblogs. It seems that modern buildings on good foundations, constructed according to the building code in force now, protected lives even though shaken to a greater extent than the code design level.

However, better designed foundations than those used at present are needed to counteract the effect of liquefaction, especially for houses.

Interestingly, non-symmetrical buildings can behave poorly if careful design is not conducted. As for the landscape, potential rock falls on hillside areas overlooking towns and suburbs have to be recognised, and appropriately considered.

Importantly, there are some low cost methods of improving earthquake safety.

1. Secure heavy items, such as header tanks, and tie back water cylinders.
2. Brace, strengthen or remove brick or other unreinforced masonry chimneys.
3. Strengthening may be achieved with a galvanised steel tube grouted into the chimney flue.
4. Where the chimney is to be removed, demolish completely if located externally, and down to ceiling level if internal. Replace chimneys with code-compliant steel flue.
5. When building, use “earthquake friendly” materials like piled or waffle-slab foundations, timber (or light steel frame) walls and lightweight roofs.
6. Remove heavy roofs like concrete tiles and replace them with lightweight materials such as steel.
7. For remedial works on houses, see the Department of Building and Housing advice.

Offshore? Does NZ Inc. need Maori trade diplomacy?

The recent resignation of the entire China Beachhead Advisory Board shows how fragile our overseas ventures can be. For all the research, political commentary and public angst, New Zealand’s economic decline continues. For Māori, this underperformance of ‘NZ Inc.’ exacerbates economic vulnerability while compounding the challenges of utilising land and resources in the volatile economic spaces of contemporary globalisation. Management of such resources is contested between cultural logics that oblige owners to protect the environment and intergenerational wealth on the one hand and profit-driven financial accounting on the other.

In this, Māori are not alone as Indigenous communities worldwide draw on whatever capital they have, including social capital comprising the networks of trust and understanding and, perhaps defining this development, cultural capital. A variety of institutions that are based on but not restricted to tradition, now promote Indigenous development while maintaining an awareness of economic bottom-lines. Therefore it can be said that the global challenge of addressing sustainable resource-use in accordance with passionately expressed, locally-generated, and culturally-attuned goals is encapsulated within contemporary Māori and Indigenous economies.



New Zealand has proven adept at past trade negotiations, and many of the predominantly Pākeha players have come from the ‘backblocks’ of New Zealand to take privileged seats at the world’s most powerful meetings. But recent negative publicity on an important delegation to the Middle East, contestation of domestic laws by foreign companies, declining ecological resilience, struggling innovation, and polarising political movements describe a cultural distance that exacerbates this country’s physical distance from the people we need to buy our produce. A racist view positions Māori at the very start of these extended supply chains: low-skilled labourers in a fast-moving world. But trade policy is no longer the exclusive club of politicians, officials, and lawyers. Various social movements now forcefully express alternative perspectives, domestically and offshore. Furthermore, new ‘players’ (coming from what are still labelled Third World or ‘developing’ nations, and potentially representing billions of people) enter the global game as the old Imperial economies struggle with many of the issues New Zealand is confronting. To be Indigenous, of ‘mixed’ descent, or an immigrant is no longer a bad thing and may actually enable previously unrealisable advantages.



While the diplomatic club is no longer exclusively white it is still predominantly masculine, further complicating Māori diplomacy by a sexism that diminishes the significant role of Indigenous women. As with their Pākeha counterparts, wāhine Māori have struggled to gain senior roles in public and private sectors while suffering (along with their children and grandchildren) the worst effects of economic marginalisation. Yet so much community resilience is reliant upon the empowered participation of women! In Aotearoa/New Zealand, if Māori-centric approaches frame how a significant component of the future economy will operate, and women are key decision-makers, then these networks operate in a vacuum of understanding by Māori and non-Māori, men and women.

The insertion of Indigenous discourse is an ineradicable moral, philosophical, legal, and practical challenge to several of the world’s economies, and particularly to those which New Zealand is historically and geopolitically linked. While Indigenous Peoples have achieved remarkable high-level formal recognition of their rights, resilience remains tenuous for many communities. Future trade negotiations involving Indigenous groups, currently in their infancy, are at risk of being opaque or even unintelligible to key participants.

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