On the evening of 16 April 2024 we gathered at Jarks in Hastings for a team dinner before we presented our research to our Te Kura i Awarua Rangahau Māori colleagues at EIT the next morning.
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Tepora and Fiona had the immense pleasure of travelling to New Orleans to keynote at the Emancipatory Research Symposium organised by the Center for Equity, Justice and the Human Spirit, Xavier University. The Center is led by Dr Cirecie West-Olatunji, who hosted a reception the evening before the Symposium. Music at the reception was provided by Dr. Michael White Cortez. Included in the quartet was trumpeter Gregg Stafford who was celebrating his 70th birthday. The following day we talked about Poipoia te Kākano, Kia Puāwai, including showing clips of the researchers talking about their research.
Kia ora. One of the milestones for our research programme is an international conference presentation. This has been hard to organise in the past couple of years because of COVID. We really wanted to travel to meet people and to talk about and present research findings. In 2022, we were able to present virtually. Much as we'd liked to have travelled to Calgary to the Amps Conference - Cultures, Communities and Design, we were pleased to participate from afar. The conference was described as 'a conference connecting planning, landscapes, architecture and people'. Participating in it allowed us to connect, hear people from all over the world, and think beyond our disciplines and learn how others were thinking about community. This is our presentation. At the start of May 2021 we had the privilege of being invited to convene as a research group at Te Kinakina wetlands. While there, we joined with community members and planted harakeke (flax) that had been gifted to the wetlands. Our morning together included a welcome to the wetlands and a blessing, and Ruka shared her mātauranga with us about the harakeke, which is a species that is harvested to make puipui. Many thanks to everyone, especially our hosts Kathleen and Violet, for a very special visit. He mihi mahana ki a koutou.
On Saturday morning, 27 February 2021, following the National Māori Housing Conference in Hastings, we visited with Zack and Tk at the Mahue Pera Ahu Whenua Trust papakāinga. It was a chance to walk the whenua (land) and admire the new road before construction of houses began the next week. Zack’s cousin, Malcom Northover, shared with us the journey he has been on, beginning in the 1990s with him tucked in the archives, identifying where land holdings were and tracing whakapapa (geneology) lines to find the descendants of original shareholders.
Tk pointed out where the housing was going to go and who would be living on the papakāinga, and Zack talked about the important role the wellness centre being developed would have within the papakāinga and more widely. We looked at the stream beyond the end of the road and Kathleen shared her knowledge about the restoration of waterways and wetlands. It was a beautiful day to be on the land and to imagine how it would look when the houses are built and whānau (families) have moved in. The Trust has big plans as the leases on their other land holdings come to an end and they will be able to determine their own future on their whenua. We talked more about this over an early lunch that was kindly provided for us by Georgina and Boy, before heading off towards for home. |
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