Search Results (35)

The emergence of Lamanite Studies exemplifies the need for decolonial and Indigenous-centered reevaluations of Mormon–Indigenous relations. This article advocates for the reclamation of Indigenous identity independent of the constraints imposed by Mormon doctrine. The incorporation of Indigenous genealogies into Mormon theology results in epistemic violence, disconnecting Indigenous peoples from their ancestral identities and substituting the latter with the settler/invader colonial construct of “Lamanite”. This paper advocates for the decolonization of Indigenous identities within Mormonism, emphasizing the need for a radical intervention that prioritizes Indigenous sovereignty and self-definition over the maintenance of colonial categories. I present approaches and scholarship in Lamanite Studies that align with Indigenous land and spiritual repatriation, promoting the restoration of Indigenous epistemologies to Indigenous communities. Theoretical colonialism must be supplemented by grassroots initiatives that empower Indigenous communities to reclaim their spiritual and cultural identities. Full article

River mouths are important indicators and mediators of interactions between rivers and the sea that mark the dispersal point for catchment-based stressors and subsidies. Satellite remote sensing data products and algorithms present many new possibilities for monitoring these dynamic and often inaccessible environments. In this study, we describe a national-scale comparative framework based on proximity to river mouths and show its application to the monitoring of coastal ecosystem health in Aotearoa New Zealand. We present results from light attenuation coefficient (K_d) analyses used to develop the framework considering data products of differing resolution and the effects of coastline geometries which might obscure the influence of catchment-derived stressors. Ten-year (2013–2022) K_d values from the highest-resolution product (500 m) showed significant differences (p < 0.01) in successively larger radii (1–20 km) despite the confounding influence of adjacent river mouths. Smaller radii returned a high variability that dropped markedly > 5 km. Tests of a 10 km radius showed that coastline geometry had a significant influence on K_d (p < 0.001), which is also likely for other water quality indicators. An analytical approach stratified by coastline geometry showed significant effects of stream order on open (p < 0.01) but not enclosed coasts, differences between marine bioregions (p < 0.05), and a degradation trend in the 90th percentile of K_d on enclosed coasts, which is indicative of extreme events associated with catchment erosion or sediment resuspension. We highlight applications of the framework to explore trends across many other meaningful scales (e.g., jurisdictions and ecosystem types) in addition to tracking changes at individual river mouths. Full article

This article investigates the colonial disruption of Māori parenting practices and its enduring effects on Indigenous identity and belonging. It explores how colonisation imposed Western parenting models, disrupting communal caregiving, and severing connections to whakapapa (ancestry) and whenua (land). Grounded in Kaupapa Māori methodologies, this research highlights pre-colonial parenting, attachment, and child development practices, demonstrating their alignment with contemporary child development theories and their potential to address intergenerational trauma. Drawing on oral literature, archival records, and studies, this paper proposes a framework for restoring ancestral parenting principles. It emphasises the importance of these practices in rebuilding cultural confidence, enhancing child wellbeing, and strengthening whānau relationships. By integrating ancestral principles into trauma-informed care, attachment-based parenting models, and culturally affirming teaching, the article envisions pathways for healing and resilience in Māori communities, contributing to broader Indigenous resurgence. Full article

This study provides a comparative analysis of ecological impact assessment (EcIA) guidance for the design and approval stages of carbon sequestration and emission reduction projects, which are rapidly proliferating in response to the global need for climate change mitigation. Previous reports of negative effects on biodiversity from such projects suggest a need for more robust project design and assessment processes to improve synergies with conservation. Using a content and thematic analysis methodology, we compared four published frameworks that guide the assessment of carbon projects in natural environments. The results showed considerable variation in environmental assessment components including the level of attention to ecosystem services and the identification of areas of high conservation value that may require specific protections. There was a general lack of guidance on the inclusion of indirect and supply chain effects despite their relevance to ecological impacts. Critically, guidance in common use in the climate mitigation sector shows differing applications of the baseline and counterfactual scenarios that are used to quantify impacts. We discuss the need to focus assessment and reporting on comparisons with recent baselines to identify the contributions of individual projects and enable adaptive management and show how aligning with the concepts of Nature-based Solutions and nature-positive could be used to reimagine the role of EcIA to achieve these objectives. If these current weaknesses can be improved, EcIA has the potential to become an important implementation pathway for the conservation–climate change nexus due to its pivotal role in project design and approval processes. Conversely, a failure to reliably address these aspects will undermine the utility of EcIA as a decision support tool for sustainable development. We encourage the further exploration of EcIA practices in this direction and highlight the pressing need for reliable comparisons to support more strategic and sustainable solutions for both the conservation and climate change agendas. Full article

This article explores the relationship between genealogy and the environment as a pathway towards decolonising indigenous minds. In Māori worldviews, everything is categorised, organised, and understood through whakapapa, or genealogy. Whakapapa resides within the land and water, safeguarding ancestral stories as they weave through time, space, and place. The environment serves as a powerful tool for maintaining, reclaiming, and reinforcing indigeneity. Strengthening the connections between whakapapa and the environment offers significant avenues for decolonising Indigenous minds, by recalibrating and releasing colonised ways of being to embody mauritau (mindfulness) through whenua kura (placefulness). Unlike Cartesian dualism, which separates the body and mind, the Māori conception of the mind is multifaceted and embodied. The mind is thought to be situated in the solar plexus, emotions in the gut, and connection to spirit in the head, all of which are deeply rooted in whakapapa and the enduring ties to ancestors and place. Whakapapa’s connections to the land, water, animals, and spiritual entities are imbued with narratives that aid in recollection and provide profound cultural context to place. These narratives offer pathways for communion with the land and water, enabling sensitivity to environmental cues, such as changing seasons, solstices, moon phases, star cycles, and natural rhythms within our inner landscapes of body, heart, and mind, fostering a sense of placefulness. Full article

Hauntings are often misconstrued as strange and often scary supernatural experiences that blur the lines between what is real and what is not. Yet, Indigenous hauntings can not only be confronting, but they can also be comforting and support place belonging. This paper offers a Māori philosophical way of theorising hauntology and its relation to time, space, place, and belonging by privileging a whakapapa perspective. Whakapapa acknowledges not only kinship relations for people, but all things and their relationship to them, from the sky to the lands, and the spiritual connections in between. Employing a whakapapa kōrero theoretical framework, I draw on Māori constructs of time and place through Wā, Wānanga (Māori stories both told and untold), and Te Wāhi Ngaro to offer some insights from my doctoral thesis where Māori PhD students shared their everyday experiences in their institutions. With a backdrop of settler-colonial structures, norms, and daily interactions, I argue that hauntings are an everyday familiar occurrence in Te Ao Māori which play a major role in the way Māori doctoral students establish and maintain a sense of belonging in their universities. Full article

Kia ora e hoa, wishing wellness and vitality, to you, dear friend. This piece is a window into the realities of being a fat Māori girl and woman. It offers insights into the sense making, intimacies, and intricacies of being a fat Māori girl, and now woman. This piece is whakapapa, the layering of genealogy, of thought, of realities, of experiences, of identities. It offers a glimpse into a time of whakapapa, of how I have made sense of my world in my many identities. Here, I share poems written throughout my research journey and my relationship navigating insider-research, being embedded in the research, being the research, and the ways in which I actualize Kaupapa Māori research. This piece opens with a karakia, a spiritual offering of safety, of welcome, and starts with the poem When I was, sharing moments and memories from ages 5 to 33. It then transitions to the poem When I am, a poem of potential, which connects back with the atua Hinenuitepō, a powerful ancestor and wahine deity, as well as her stories, transitions, and Kaupapa that she has shared with me, so that I may make sense of the world and this Kaupapa, the ways she has guided me on my journey. It then ends with a karakia, a spiritual offering of safety and cleansing, a farewell, to you e hoa. Full article

Green space is needed in urban areas to increase resilience to climate change and other shocks, as well as for human health and wellbeing. Urban green space (UGS) is increasingly considered as green infrastructure and highly complementary to engineered urban infrastructure, such as water and transport networks. The needs for resilient, sustainable and equitable future wellbeing require strategic planning, designing and upgrading of UGS, especially in areas where it has been underprovided. We explore the implications of these needs for urban development through a detailed review of cited UGS analyses conducted on the larger cities in Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ). There are important differences in UGS availability (i.e., quantity), accessibility and quality within and between cities. Some of these differences stem from ad hoc patterns of development, as well as topography. They contribute to apparently growing inequities in the availability and accessibility of UGS. Broader health and wellbeing considerations, encompassing Indigenous and community values, should be at the heart of UGS design and decisionmaking. Most of AoNZ’s cities aim (at least to some extent) at densification and decarbonisation to accommodate a growing population without costly sprawl; however, to date, sprawl continues. Our findings indicate a clear need for the design and provision of high-quality, well-integrated UGS within and servicing areas of denser housing, which are typically areas in cities with a demonstrable UGS deficiency. Full article

Statues and monuments are permanent forms of commemoration that interpret and reconstruct public memory in colonial settler societies. Representation through memorialisation is attributed to a genealogy of Western collective remembering that reflects the values, narratives, and experiences of the dominant settler population. Yet, collective remembering and memory can change. This article reports on Indigenous collective remembering practices that were observed in a local government intervention in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Boulcott Memorial Research Project sought iwi Māori (Indigenous Māori tribes) perspectives of the battle of Boulcott’s Farm to change a one-sided colonial memorial that was erected to honour British militia who died in the conflict. Iwi kaipūrākau (representatives) from Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Rangatahi, Ngāti Hāua, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira relayed their perspective of the battle through wānanga (a Māori oral tradition). In wānanga, kaipūrākau were perceived to remember relationally, outside colonial time, and through contemporary concerns and political interests, to advance tribal autonomy and self-determination. In this paper, I show how collective remembering in wānanga offers an anti-colonial ethic and intervention for building commemorative landscapes that can redirect public remembrance beyond the limitations of settler colonial memory and towards perspectives that are in tune with Indigenous peoples’ lived realities. Full article

The study examines how members of the historically white possessive and supremacist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States (mis)appropriated Māori genealogy, known as whakapapa. The Mormon use of whakapapa to promote Mormon cultural memory and narratives perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and white supremacy, as this paper shows. The research discusses Church racism against Native Americans and Pacific Peoples. This paper uses Anthropologist Thomas Murphy’s scholarship to demonstrate how problematic the Book of Mormon’s religio-colonial identity of Lamanites is for these groups. Application of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s white possessive doctrine and Hemopereki Simon’s adaptation to cover Church-Indigenous relations and the salvation contract is discussed. We explore collective and cultural memory, and discuss key Māori concepts like Mana, Taonga, Tapu, and Whakapapa. A brief review of LDS scholar Louis C. Midgley’s views on Church culture, including Herewini Jone’s whakapapa wānanga, is followed by a discussion of Māori cultural considerations and issues. The paper concludes that the alteration perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and Pacific peoples’ racialization and white supremacy. Genetic science and human migration studies contradict Mormon identity narratives and suggest the BOM is spiritual rather than historical. Finally, the paper suggests promoting intercultural engagement on Mormon (mis)appropriation of taonga Māori. Full article

Media representations and dominant social constructions of the ‘ideal’ physique for young women are often framed through a Westernised lens that focuses on heteronormative, White able-bodied aesthetics of beauty and femininity. Until very recently, the imagery available for young women to connect with and aspire to has been highly limited, failing to represent the embodied cultural beliefs that Indigenous and culturally-minoritised young women may have towards the gendered body. In this paper, we draw upon focus groups (wānanga) and digital diaries with young, physically active Māori and Pasifika wāhine (women) in Aotearoa New Zealand, to reveal how they are making meaning out of dominant framings of beauty, and drawing upon cultural knowledge to refuse such portrayals, instead reclaiming power in their own bodies. Working at the intersection of Mana Wahine and Masi methodologies, this article amplifies the voices of young Māori and Pasifika wāhine who actively participate in sport and/or physical activity, embrace and appreciate their strong brown bodies, and are critically reading and rejecting dominant Western framings of beauty and femininity. In so doing, this paper contributes to a growing international dialogue about the need for new culturally-informed understandings of body image by young women from Indigenous and culturally marginalised communities. Full article

This paper reports on the development and validation of the COVID Psychosocial Impacts Scale (CPIS), a self-report measure that comprehensively examines both positive and negative psychosocial impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first part of the program of work in which the CPIS was administered and compared with a measure of psychological distress (Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, K-10) and wellbeing (World Health Organization Well-Being Index, WHO-5). The data were obtained online in 2020 and 2022 at two distinct time points to capture different exposures to the pandemic in the New Zealand population to a non-representative sample of 663 and 687 adults, respectively. Two hundred seventy-one participants took part in both surveys. Findings indicate a unidimensional structure within CPIS subscales and inter-relatedness among CPIS stress-related subscales. The scatter plots and correlation matrix indicate CPIS having a positive moderate correlation with K10 and a negative moderate correlation with WHO-5, indicative of construct validity. The paper outlines contextual factors surrounding CPIS development and makes suggestions for future iterations of CPIS. Further work will examine its psychometric properties across cultures. Full article

Food waste is a growing issue globally, with estimates that 40% of all food is being wasted. Despite a growing body of research on food waste, information regarding the tertiary education sector is lacking. The variety and size of food service operations at tertiary institutes provide an opportunity to address food waste and work towards the Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3, which aims for a halving of food waste by 2030. We investigated the food waste initiatives at thirteen tertiary institutes (eight universities, four polytechnics, and one wānanga) in Aotearoa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in March, April, and May 2022, with staff working in sustainability at each institute. Initiatives were summarised using the “Target, Measure, Act” approach. Only 38% had formal targets for food waste reduction, while just over half (54%) of the institutes consistently measured food waste. All institutes had at least two initiatives in place that aimed at reducing food waste; the most common being worm farms (n = 11), solutions for leftover foods (n = 11), and composting (n = 9). Several challenges to the initiatives were identified from the interviews. These included the COVID-19 pandemic; contamination of organic food waste destined for composting; attitudes of individuals and institutes; and funding and resources. Although a range of initiatives were found to be in place, these approaches, such as worm farms and composting, are near the bottom of the waste hierarchy. New initiatives should be developed to reduce the volume of excess food, focusing on prevention and avoidance rather than recycling and recovery. Full article

Within te ao Māori—the Māori world view—whakapapa, or genealogical connections, link together every being. Relationships with trees are traced through ancestral bonds that are recited through storytelling. Trees are tūpuna, elders, who hold knowledge, reflected in the etymology of rākāu (tree) being the pū (base) of pūrākau (stories). The Atua Tāne Mahuta, sought ngā kete o te wānanga, the three baskets of knowledge. The wānanga is a place of learning and was brought into being by the god of trees, forests, and birds. Ngāpuhi artist Nova Paul’s experimental films are made with kaupapa Māori values. Her most recent films Rākau and Hawaiki, both 2022, reflect on lessons from trees, the latter premiering at the Sundance Film Festival 2023. These films are not so much about trees as by trees. Nova has made film developer from foliage of the trees that are filmed so that, for example, the riverside pōhutukawa tree is processed in a bath of pōhutukawa chlorophyl developer. For Nova, this process reveals not only an image but the mauri (life force) of the tree through the taking and then the making of her tree films. The films produced are more like an arboreal self-portrait: trees speaking directly through an embodied medium. If trees process sunlight to produce chlorophyl, here, chlorophyl produces images of light in order to communicate messages across species. The tohunga Reverend Māori Marsden wrote that photographic technologies might provide spiritual insight into perceiving life force: “Those with the powers and insight and perceptions (Matakite), perceived mauri as an aura of light and energy radiating from all animate life. It is now possible to photograph the mauri in living things.” In previous films, Nova experimented with colour-separation techniques to pull apart the fabric of time and space, which Tessa wrote about for the Third Text online forum “Decolonising Colour?” That article was translated into Spanish for the book Pensamientos Migrantes: Intersecciones cinematográficas by the Colombian experimental film publishers Hambre Cine (2020). Continuing with a conversation about the ways in which experimental film practices can open up a space for decolonial thought and Indigenous epistemologies, Nova and Tessa co-write this paper in order to share the pūrākau (stories) arising from the images of these rākāu (trees), in which photosynthesis, filmmaking, and spirit, are intertwined, and where the mauri (life force) is revealed. Full article

The connection between the natural environment and human health is well documented in Indigenous narratives. The maramataka—a Māori system of observing the relationships between signs, rhythms, and cycles in the environment—is underpinned by generations of Indigenous knowledge, observation, and experimentation. The maramataka enabled Māori and our Pacific relatives to attune with the movements of the environment and ensure activities essential for survival and well-being were conducted at the optimal times. A recent revival of the maramataka in various communities in New Zealand is providing uniquely Indigenous ways to ‘reconnect’ people, and their health, with the natural environment. In a world where people have become increasingly disconnected from the natural environment, the maramataka offers an alternative to dominant perspectives of health. It also provides a mechanism to enhance the many facets of health through an understanding of the human–ecosystem relationship in a uniquely Indigenous way. This conceptual paper (i) highlights a uniquely Indigenous way of understanding the environment (the maramataka) and its connection to health, (ii) discusses the connections between the maramataka and scientific research on health and the environment, and (iii) introduces current and potential applications of the maramataka in improving health and well-being. Full article