The Landscape Foundation's first book is runner-up in the NZSA New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards 2021.
Kia Whakanuia te Whenua, People Place Landscape explores the spirit of whenua and how it is embedded in place through identity and naming. As a Maori-led work, it confronts the pain of alienation and whenua loss for all Indigenous peoples and looks at how that can be transformed. Forty different authors contributed articles, including perspectives from Aboriginal, American Indian and Irish landscape architects as well as Māori and Pakeha.
Concern for the protection and management of whenua was the inspiration for the collection. Global and local impacts such as climate change, biodiversity loss, water pollution and structural issues such as government policy and neoliberal economics are affecting global and local habitats as well as how we perceive, relate to and care for them. This is at the heart of issues for landscape practitioners, Māori, ecologists, and many others.
I edited the collection and contributed a paper to it - Carrying our Anchors: One Pākehā’s reflection on Kā Huru Manu in a season of change.
...I was struck recently by a proposed climate change action in the 2018 Climate Change Strategy of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. Set under Te Whakatipu section and categorised as a longer term action (by 2050), it reads:
(That) Marae and Rūnanga facilities threatened by rising sea levels and increased hazards from climate change have plans in place to relocate.[1]
It was the unvarnished, matter-of-fact pragmatism of this proposed action that surprised me – its candour and apparent lack of emotion in the face of, from my view, what sounds like potentially calamitous loss. This gut response says a lot about my positionality, culturally and professionally, in thinking about places and landscapes. ...
[1] Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, August 2018, p. 23
Kia Whakanuia te Whenua is available to purchase from the Landscape Foundation and bookstores.
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