Browsing by Author "Forster M"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    He Tātai Whenua: Environmental genealogies
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 19/07/2019) Forster M
    Whakapapa, an indigenous form of genealogy of the Māori people of Aotearoa New Zealand, is a powerful tool for understanding social phenomena. In this paper, the environmental histories of Aotearoa New Zealand are converted to whakapapa/genealogical sequences and kōrero tuku iho/narratives derived from whakapapa, to demonstrate this explanatory power. It is argued that whakapapa is much more than a method for mapping kinship relationships. Whakapapa enables vast amounts of information to be collated and analysed, to reveal a multitude of narratives. It also facilitates a critique of indigenous rights issues, revealing Māori agendas for environmental management. Therefore, the whakapapa sequences and narratives created as part of this paper provide an understanding that is not restricted to the grand narrative or the past as whakapapa is never-ending, dynamic, fluid and future-focused.
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    Pouwhenua: Marking and storying the ancestral landscape
    (abramis academic publishing, 2023-08-20) Meihana P; Forster M
    This paper explores a series of contemporary strategies to restore and share our stories and knowledge of Te Tapuwae Tahi a Rangitāne-nui-a-Rangi (the single footprint of great Rangitāne of the heavens); the tribal territory once occupied and controlled by the descendants of the ancestor Rangitāne. Colonisation stifled our storytelling traditions, disrupting the Indigenous communications landscape by silencing Māori voices and removing the tangible markers of our authority, histories, relationships and connections. Yet, Māori have a long legacy of resisting erasure of our memories and authority derived from the tribal territory. This paper explores a series of contemporary strategies to restore and share our stories and knowledge of Te Tapuwae Tahi a Rangitāne-nui-a-Rangi (the single footprint of great Rangitāne of the heavens); the tribal territory once occupied and controlled by the descendants of the ancestor Rangitāne. As part of He Tātai Whenua, a project to develop a Māori landscape classification system, we explore contemporary practices of mapping and marking the tribal territory and systems for assembling our knowledge of the environment. We describe here contemporary physical expressions and associated rituals in the tribal area of the Rangitāne people (i.e., Wairau area and along the Manawatū River) of the tradition of pouwhenua (posts used to mark tribal authority over an area or resource). We argue that this practice is a form of Indigenous and ethical mapping that seeks to disrupt mapping traditions that colonise and silence Indigeneity. Māori therefore are building on old traditions for naming and visualising the cultural landscape to continue our storytelling traditions, decolonise the landscape and connect with the communication landscapes of our ancestors.
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    Restoring the Feminine of Indigenous Environmental Thought
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 16/03/2019) Forster M
    A feminist genealogy approach to governmentality is used to explore how indigenous knowledge and aspirations related to the environment become embedded into Aotearoa New Zealand environmental policy and practice. Particular consideration is given to the indigenous feminine as an impetus for change as expressed through atua wāhine/Māori female spiritual authority and powers. Political projects and activism by Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, provide the basis to explore contests between environmental truths that originate from Māori traditions and those that have come to dominate national environmental politics that originate from British “Western” traditions. It is argued that truth contests have been extremely effective at disrupting the power and authority of environmental policy and practice dominated by Western thought. Furthermore, efforts to maintain the momentum of these transformation and consolidate the authority and power of Māori communities is linked to rendering the indigenous feminine visible, retelling our herstories and developing new relationships and practices that give expression to atua.