Climate change and mātauranga Māori: making sense of a western environmental construct

ABSTRACT

Te ao Māori approaches to restoring wellbeing in relation to people and te taiao are proliferating in Aotearoa New Zealand. While climate change is a critical lever nationally and globally, it sits in the background of Māori initiatives and worldviews. Drawing on participant interviews, this paper follows the work needed for Māori to reconcile with the concept of climate change. Considerable ‘work’ was needed to move through various processes in the face of contrasting concepts and worldviews. This firstly involved remembering and honouring mātauranga and the values and actions embedded in Māori knowledge systems. Participants then had to make sense of the relationships between the concept of climate change and Māori concepts. Finally, participants provided examples of the actions and leadership that Māori take in this field. The concept of climate change had considerable traction and leverage; however, it frames and constrains efforts to effect planetary healing locally, nationally, and globally. Acting on more expansive and relational understandings can slow both the drivers and effects of climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Mātauranga Māori
• climate health
• climate adaptation
• climate change
• Te Ao Māori

Introduction

After decades of successive governments in Aotearoa politicking and pontificating on the state of our environments, global climate change is widely recognised. It is now accepted that, because of long-held unsustainable models of growth and development, we are at the beginning of large-scale ecological collapse (McMichael et al. 2003; IPCC 2018, 2022; Lewis et al. 2020; McGregor et al. 2020; United Nations 2020). Deemed the single greatest threat to human health (Whyte 2017; Jones 2019; McGregor et al. 2020; IPCC 2022), climate change, as a response to anthropogenic (human-related) behaviours, is altering human and other critical life-sustaining systems on planet Earth. To date, the inability to plan or implement solutions to this impending ecological catastrophe continues to fall short of addressing the interdependent nature of all living systems on Earth.

In this paper, we provide a brief background to climate change as a concept and contrast this with te ao Māori (Māori world) understandings. We briefly raise issues involved in contrasting and reconciling values and concepts and the potential limitations and opportunities involved. As Jackson (2010, p. 327) states, ‘Where you start the debate from determines what the debate will be about’. Using participant voices, we seek to highlight the work that Māori and other Indigenous Peoples do when faced with terms and concepts that are not our own yet hold power and are generally assumed to be widely resonant. We offer this as a contribution towards understanding the dimensions of integrated Māori knowledge systems as a counter narrative to Western capitalist ideologies founded on carbon-intensive economics (Harmsworth et al. 2016; Jones 2019; Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor 2019; Lewis et al. 2020; Taiapa 2022; Taiapa and Moewaka Barnes 2023) and conceptualisations of land as property (Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor 2019). We also offer this as a concrete example of the ‘work that we do’ (Moewaka Barnes 2023) as Indigenous people, constantly grappling and engaging with concepts alien to our own. Moewaka Barnes (2023, p. 1) argues that ‘the work that we do as Māori is largely invisible, except to ourselves, and rarely articulated’ as we work in places and grapple with concepts that are not our own. This paper provides concrete examples through participants giving voice to this work in relation to climate change.

Background

Climate change

In its most recent report, the IPCC (2022) states with very high confidence that the threats of climate-related morbidity and mortality on population health are increasing. Rising temperatures, increased frequency of volatile weather events, ocean acidification, sea level rises, and extreme droughts and floods are some of the climate risks already widely observed (Henry and Pam 2018; IPCC 2022). It is argued that biodiversity loss, destruction of life-sustaining ecosystems and habitats, human displacement, and the spread of air and waterborne diseases, will severely undermine public health and wellbeing, and our ability to respond to these impacts. For Indigenous Peoples who derive strength, wellbeing, identity, and belonging from connections to place, these impacts will escalate disproportionately (Jones 2019; IPCC 2022; Masters-Awatere et al. 2023). However, as Bargh (2020) cautions, this needs to be balanced with a focus on the adaptive capabilities of Indigenous Peoples to environmental change. Climate change discourse increasingly acknowledges Indigenous Peoples as, not only at greater risk but also as having rights. Indigenous peoples have long understood and dealt with changes in climate, including changes due to migration. However, the currently prevailing crisis driven concept of climate change and understanding of associated risks are largely framed according to the presumed universally accepted western concept of climate change (Crawford et al. 2019). Numerous documents write about Indigenous Peoples as needing to be recognised, acknowledged, and engaged with in order to adapt, rather than having a voice in our fundamental understanding of what is happening to our planet and what the solutions might be. As the IPCC (2022) concludes, ‘Successful adaptation to the health impacts of climate change in Indigenous Peoples requires recognition of their rights to self-determination, focusing on Indigenous conceptualisations of well-being, prioritising Indigenous knowledge and understanding the broader agenda of decolonisation, health and human rights’ (P.1112). While this provides leverage for Indigenous approaches and our mātauranga to come to the fore, it does not enable our broader understandings or solutions to flourish. Rather, we are sporadically invited to engage with climate change as a concept and determine how we, as Indigenous Peoples, are then able to act within this.

Mātauranga Māori and te taiao

The word mātauranga is commonly expressed in English as ‘Māori knowledge’, or ‘Māori ways of knowing’ (Mead 2003; Hikuroa 2017). Despite often being framed as ‘traditional’ or emerging from the past, in this paper, we use it as a dynamic term to refer to our collective knowledge, systems and experiences from the past, present, and beyond (Moewaka Barnes 2008). Encoded within are values and concepts that form the basis of te ao Māori and reflect long-standing connections to place founded on holistic interactions and understandings of te taiao (Hikuroa 2017; Mercier 2018; Hutchings 2020; Awatere and Harcourt 2021; Wilkinson and Mcfarlane 2021) as the interconnection of whenua (land), wai (water), āhuarangi (climate) and koiora (life). From this weave, the whakapapa of all things manifests as te taiao, encompassing all that ebbs and flows in the physical, metaphysical, and temporal expanses of the cosmos. Te taiao is universal and weaves together all relations, practices, and perspectives (Vereijssen et al. 2017). These relational understandings are embedded in the unifying term tangata whenua, commonly translated to mean people of the land. The notion of collectively belonging to land contrasts with ideals that lie at the heart of colonisation, i.e. land is a commodity that individual humans have rights over, and it can be delineated and bought and sold for profit.

Māori values and relational concepts are increasingly applied to enact alternate (to western and property) ways of relating to and protecting te taiao. Legal frameworks are used on occasion to recognise and protect more encompassing human relationships with the environment. In Aotearoa Te Urewera Act (2014), Te Awa Tupua Act (2017), and Te Ruruku Pūtakerongo collective deed for redress of Taranaki mounga, are recent examples where identified environments have been granted the legal status of personhood and endowed with the rights and powers of a legal person (Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor 2019). This means Māori can seek a legal defence of the rights of a river, mountain, forest, or other parts of the environment from the adverse effects of human behaviour. Such moves were fought long and hard for by Indigenous Peoples. They signal a departure from traditional western concepts of property ownership (Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor 2019) and are one example of how human-centric tools can be used to respond to and support Indigenous environmental relationships and aspirations (Argyrou and Hummels 2019).

Mātauranga Māori and government approaches – square pegs in round holes

When considering the need for constitutional transformation Jackson (2010) reminds us of the power of words. ‘If we begin from a Crown starting point … we limit the options and allow the Crown to frame the debate’ (Jackson 2010, p. 326). In the current context, how we frame observations of the ecological crisis is important because it determines the range of solutions available to us, as well as who is listened to and who is not. This is particularly resonant considering that the term ‘climate change’ is often used in the mainstream news media as a way of framing and constructing the changes being observed in climate. Employed by media as well as in scientific and public fora, claiming climate change as a majority framework can create a sense of ‘moral authority, or additional empirical voracity’ (Crawford et al. 2019, p. 35).

Despite the encouraging Māori-led examples mentioned earlier, dominant responses to climate change remain largely driven by the vested interests of corporations (Hutchings and Greensill 2010). These responses reflect the same philosophical, ideological, and theoretical frameworks that underpin the colonial, capitalist systems that have created the ecological crises we currently face, including climate change (Whyte 2017; Lewis et al. 2020).

In practical terms, New Zealand government policy and key supporting processes such as the NZ Climate Change Commission’s advice on policy directions remain intertwined with corporate interests. It has been noted that responses from the commission were symptomatic of a lack of cohesion in the government’s approach to mātauranga, combined with minimal legislative protections and funding opportunities to elevate mātauranga Māori (Mead et al. 2022). As a result, the range of solutions remains constrained within dominant social, political, economic, and cultural frameworks (Jones 2019).

In recent years treaty settlement claims processes and national debates on natural resource management provided a springboard for the positioning of Māori environmental epistemologies (Harmsworth et al. 2016). The Resource Management Act 1991 (Morris and Ruru 2010) and its subsequent amendments in 2017 and 2021 are the main legal apparatus through which Māori relationships with te taiao are mediated. Although the RMA recognises Te Tiriti o Waitangi and aspects of tikanga Māori, it is ultimately a government instrument designed by and for the status quo. As a result, Māori have developed approaches that better recognise and protect Māori relationships with te taiao. Generally, these embrace beliefs and values that emphasise the interconnection between the health of whenua and human health; for example, the Cultural Health Index (Tipa and Teirney 2006; Tipa 2013) and a range of initiatives that seek to address and restore mauri, a binding life force or essence (e.g. Harmsworth et al. 2002; Morgan 2006). Despite these initiatives being grounded in te ao Māori, climate change is an ever-present and powerful framing, casting a global shadow. In the following section, we show some of the processes involved in engaging with the concept of climate change. Through participant voices, we explore how Māori experts in te taiao grounded themselves in te ao Māori in order to reconcile their approaches and actions.

Methods

This qualitative research was guided by kaupapa Māori (Smith 1999), which meant the research team is Māori and the research was analysed and led by Māori to ensure Māori voices came to the fore. This also meant examining climate change by taking Māori concepts as the norm and applying a critical Māori lens on assumed western worldviews. Following ethical approval from the University of Otago, 9 key informant interviews were conducted from 1 November 2022 to March 2023 with taiao practitioners. All participants were Māori and had, usually lifelong, experience of leading or playing roles in community-based taiao initiatives locally and around Aotearoa. Participants were located in Northland, Taranaki, Papaioea, Te Tairāwhiti, Whanganui, and Dunedin, ranged in age from 30’s to 60’s; four were male and five were female. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim; aliases are used to ensure anonymity.

When the authors looked at the data, a decolonial story of remembering, renaming and reclaiming knowledge about the climate emerged. What started as an exploration of some of the contributions mātauranga makes towards climate health became a story of reclamation. Participants went through multiple processes and did considerable ‘work’, moving from whakapapa and tūpuna obligations, to conceptualising and working in this space, putting mātauranga into practice. The following findings section moves through these processes, using participant voices as they describe their relationships with mātauranga and the concept of climate change. The story finishes with examples of how this translates into practice to promote healing.

Findings: grounding obligations in practice

Whakapapa as foundation

Participant talk was embedded in connections to tūpuna, the foundations and obligations we carry by way of taonga tuku iho and the continuance of mātauranga and te ao Māori. All participants experiences, observations, and aspirations for te taiao were placed within a relational frame, grounded in tūpuna, atua, and what was handed down. A whakapapa framing was used to understand interconnectedness through time and place. From these understandings, obligations and accountabilities were articulated.

… going right back to the whakapapa … back to the beginning, going back to Papatūānuku and Ranginui. So how do we all come down from there? What have all those atua, … got to do with what’s going on? And for me, that just makes a lot of sense. … because … once you break a link in the whakapapa, well things go a bit, haywire, te tītaha. So it was about always keeping, being able to track back to, to Ranginui, and Papatūānuku. And to see how we all come down from there, and all of the roles and the responsibilities that all the atua that are to do with the taiao had. So those are the those are some of the things that yeah, that I’ve learned over the years about, um about climate change (Kataraina)

Our original landscapes, our original instructions from our tūpuna, and how those and our ways in which the whenua looked prior to us. So, and that being the tuakana, we have an obligation to restore, to reclothe Paptūānuku, to you know, restore healthy systems, to restore and to live in balance with those systems. (Ata)

By drawing on these understandings, values, principles, and ways of working were developed. Tāmati describes mātauranga as a continuum and something that is embedded in Māori.

I think it’s really important, just like what we’ve done with Māori health models, is start to develop models that really work for ourselves and frameworks that are guided by those very ancient and traditional Māori principles and that, because those are the concepts that were handed down to us by tūpuna, to actually address issues that we’re dealing with now … so there’s that continuum, again, that I talked about right at the beginning of our kōrero. I see mātauranga Māori is something that’s in the past and didn’t stop at 1840 (when Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed between Māori and the Crown) and then we switched to another knowledge system. It’s embedded in us, and we draw on those concepts and principles for trying to address issues that are now. (Tāmati)

Although the term climate change was not seen as arising from mātauranga Māori, the idea that humans affect environments was not a new concept. In the following excerpt, Kataraina describes how long-held knowledge of the environment enabled interpretations of shifts and changes.

I think for Māori … the stuffs always been in our heads, but it hasn’t been verbalized as climate change. But now it’s kind of got a label to it. So, definitely old people have always … been observant … of what’s going on around them. You know even simple things like the different times that different trees flower, what’s that telling us? It’s kind of not by accident, there’s a reason that happens. So, what’s the reason? What’s going to be the outcome for that next season, if things are flowering early, or flowering late or not flowering at all. (Kataraina)

As Kataraina describes, knowledge relevant to changes in the environment including climate changes is longstanding in te ao Māori. The concept was not isolated but seen as part of a symbiotic relationship and communication between people and Papatūānuku (‘Earth Mother’). Such deep-rooted obligations grounded in te taiao were inherently balanced and respectful.

Framing climate change

While participants noted more commonly described climate change effects, they also expressed concerns about the deeper and less visible impacts on human health and wellbeing. Below, Ata raises the issue of risks to wairua (narrowly translated as spirit and spirituality) and mental health, discussing concerns about the vulnerability of rangatahi (young people) in this space.

… there’s a whole lot wrapped up in our mental health with what’s happening in climate change right now … And we’ve got a lot of those pictures at the moment in different forms that we are presenting to our rangatahi. And its rangatahi in particular, I’m really worried about because, you know, we wonder why our suicide rates are going up. And if we’re going to be presenting that … (Ata)

The concerns Ata expresses are not only about climate change impacts on wairua but also about how to deal with these impacts, including safeguards for those who work in this space.

I do worry about the dialogues, the discourses, the ways they are presented, and the wairua impact, the different levels of impact on us as humans, especially if we … have not developed tikanga processes and protections for people in those, who work in those spaces … there’s … lots of big issues around this massive, from a wairua perspective, from a Māori perspective. What you have just done is introduced an entity of such magnitude, it’s bigger than any of your wairua can cope with … But … it would be quite cool to have some processes, tikanga processes. We should be talking to some of our mātauranga people around developing processes or to deal with the overwhelm. (Ata)

While discussing climate change, mātauranga was regularly used to frame how participants worked in this space grounded in te ao Māori. They articulated and related mātauranga to issues that might be seen as needing technological approaches associated with western science. However, when framed within te ao Māori, these issues took on particular meanings, as illustrated by Haki. Here Haki likens active transport to the concept of mana motuhake meaning, among other things, autonomy and self-determination.

I think that’s probably the one way that I see mātauranga Māori and active transport is, is really those … Yeah, the ability to go to places you need to, in ways that don’t force reliance on one kind of mode, the car … Like coming back to mana motuhake, like having options, having the ability to access places that you need to when you need to. (Haki)

Participants described wairua as often missing from western framings, but critical for understanding and working in this space, as Tiare articulates:

Wairua is our point of difference. A lot of organic systems don’t acknowledge wairua. Of course, we know that … we were connected to wairua as Indigenous People; as Māori. (Tiare)

Haki goes on to discuss broader connections between wairua, humans and non-humans in relation to how we think about housing.

… it’s been working on a project with a couple of women near the East Cape, Te Whānau a Apanui. And they had a stream on their land, and had kind of been spending a lot of time returning it to a wetland form … And it’s interesting because it’s from a housing project that we’re involved in, but it was all about housing the nonhuman descendants of the atua kind of thing … We’re thinking over here housing … nonhuman relations, then a step back would be to thinking about housing people. (Haki)

Deeper and more connected thinking and acting were evident in ways that participants saw of reworking this space, moving away from ‘a very singular lens’, not just in relation to Māori but nationally. Focusing on climate change was seen as not dealing with ‘bigger problems’ that drive, among other things, climate change.

And that actually might become the way we start to address these issues even nationally … , because I don’t … I think we’re seeing it still through a very singular lens. It even annoys me when we separate climate change out on its own. And we’re not dealing with bigger problems like urban growth and housing development … more holistically, because they’re all driving climate change. (Tamati)

Decolonising ways of thinking that in turn drove decolonising ways of working were important. This process begins with the individual, but the reach is potentially international.

I run the reo taiao programme (language based in nature) that enhances the leadership of our kaimahi within the Taranaki Mounga restoration project. So, I’m kinda like de-schooling and decolonizing myself and wanting to reclaim our traditional teaching and learning spaces again in taiao … we need to go back to reclaiming those spaces … to elevate our education in order for our tamariki to better understand what’s happening globally. (Puni)

Moving to practice

Participants moved from grounding themselves in whakapapa to conceptual thinking to grappling with what this meant for them in their work. Decolonising and shifting practices included examples of grounding practice in mātauranga that gave rise to practical solutions reflective of the concepts and issues raised earlier.

For the following participant, reclaiming memories and knowledge of wetlands supported the reclaiming of narratives and tikanga associated with a place. This narrative reflects the earlier participant kōrero around returning to older wisdom and knowledge in order to make connections. From this grounding, whānau were then able to make sense and move forward.

… our focus was to engage with whānau, and how they reconnect to those spaces, because for a long time they’ve been disconnected from their own wetlands, and most of them don’t exist anymore … And so it was kind of for them, figuring that out, talking to their kaumātua about, what, how they interacted with it … And then that kind of helped whānau, to understand we have those species in our wetland, ‘oh, we know those species’, you know, and these ones are like tuna or kōura, whitebait, watercress you know, for kairaranga, like our weavers it was all the weaving species. So, there was all these kind of little snippets happening here and there, but we wanted the opportunity to bring it all together into one resource. So, we could start building that picture a lot clearer. Because everyone was kind of interacting with the wetlands for different purposes. So just naturally, all of that kōrero started to come together. (Mia)

Mia speaks about sharing learnings as being about the ‘voice of the wetlands’, illustrating the view of whenua as ‘person’.

And what we saw, an opportunity was to communicate or bring about awareness of the wetland programmes that a lot of iwi and hapū have been doing over the last couple of years. And we’ve put that all into two handbooks … I think for us, it was really important to give a voice to wetlands, but also to give a voice to wetlands through our whānau lens, rather than the very Eurocentric lens that we were very used to. (Mia)

Mātauranga also provided underlying values and concepts in relation to urban settings, enabling a deep and broad lens on urban development to support people and the healing of Papatūānuku.

… in the Dunedin context, there’s one called Toitū, which was a stream that ran down to the Otago harbour … which was concreted over and built over. But that’s one where I’d love to see that be brought back to the surface, essentially, so that you can see the stream again, that you can touch the water again, and connect with all the narratives and stories that are associated with it, not just kind of bury it out of out of sight out of mind, I think … There’s certain concepts in urban design and urbanism [to mātauranga] that, I think, promote similar values. (Haki)

For others, the observation and application of local mātauranga connected to the health of a marine ecosystem in a hapū kāpata kai provided impetus to mobilise kaitiakitanga responsibilities, as Taine explains:

And after we’ve been monitoring after the last two years, the areas where we’ve … removed the kinas out of the barrens, the seaweed, it’s starting to come back. So now we see different fishes that we used to see before returning to these areas, which is so cool … we can take them [kina] from there and put them on to seaweed over there, fatten them up and still give the opportunity for people to harvest … And it makes the efforts that we put in so much more exhilarating, and it’s making us know that all our efforts are worth it, we are making the change. (Taine)

In this final quote, Ata speaks about how all knowledge is brought together to achieve the supposedly impossible. Optimism and determination are evident, founded on trust for the value of action grounded in mātauranga.

And putting the information together, we’re trying things out, you know, we’re actually out there in the taiao, trying things that scientists are telling us you can’t possibly do. We’ve been told you cannot restore toheroa on our coast, for example. Well bugger that we’re going to have a go. And we have been talking to other Māori communities around the country and they’re doing the same, they’re having a go. (Ata)

Discussion and conclusions

As Māori, we frequently compromise in terms of our understandings of, and practices with, the environment as we engage with concepts other than our own (Moewaka Barnes 2023). As a result, aspirations to practice mātauranga Māori to restore the mauri of our ecosystems or to undertake kaitiakitanga responsibilities with whenua remain constrained within dominant framings and constructions (Hutchings 2020). In this context, Māori work in the climate change space is like a round peg in a square hole.

Western scientific understandings of climate change often describe discrete processes based on emissions and global heating that do not capture the underlying or totality of problems and possible solutions (IPCC 2022). Vested interests that benefit from the exploitation of natural resources and pollution of the environments are embedded in dominant power structures (Hutchings and Greensill 2010). There are moves to take a more relational approach through fields such as Planetary Health, which calls for more holistic thinking and action that recognises interconnections between climate change and human health (McKinney 2019; Pongsiri et al. 2019; MacNeill et al. 2021). While these approaches emphasise human disruptions to natural environments, many climate change approaches (Hardee et al. 2018; Xu et al. 2020) do little to challenge the values and assumptions underpinning human-centric and extractive notions of progress and growth (Whyte 2017; Jones 2019; Lewis et al. 2020). How we frame ecological crisis is important because it determines the range of solutions available to us, as well as who is listened to, who is seen as having solutions and who is not.

Indigenous Peoples have concepts and values that encompass climate and climate changes in relational and reciprocal ways (Harmsworth et al. 2016; Whyte 2017; Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor 2019). Māori-led initiatives in te taiao are becoming visible and sought after, while remaining undervalued. In this study, honouring and practising mātauranga, values and actions embedded in Māori systems provided a grounding from which to determine how Māori maintained relationships with whenua and sought to heal people and places. However, in undertaking this, participants demonstrated some of the considerable ‘work that is done’ (Moewaka Barnes 2023) in the face of alien concepts, in this case, climate change. It became a journey of working out how climate change can fit into, or be found in, Māori practices rather than the other way around and how to work around or with this.

In order to leverage but not immerse themselves in climate change discourses and resources, participants gave voice to a range of processes as they engaged with climate change in contrast to Māori understandings. They described how mātauranga Māori is based on relational understandings, expressed through whakapapa and provided insights on the ways they reflected on and honoured the past to restore and enhance te taiao. The taiao-focused strategies and initiatives they engaged in were expressions of their aspirations to be self-determining and respectful in their relationships with whenua and people. Understanding tūpuna teachings and mutually respectful relationships with te taiao provided opportunities for decolonising processes and actions that placed climate change to one side. Grounding mātauranga Māori in whakapapa provided a point of connection to move towards practical actions.

We argue that included in the positive contributions of mātauranga is its ability to ground and express Māori relationships with te taiao and support holistic and integrated pathways. Among other things, these pathways slow the loss of biodiversity and reduce atmospheric carbon by supporting the healing of Papatūānuku (see for example McAllister et al. 2019). However, if Indigenous knowledge systems can slow the drivers and effects of climate change, a collective voice promoting paradigmatic power shifts that challenge understandings and resist the systems and structures that maintain the current climate trajectory will do so much more.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to mihi to all of the participants who contributed their time, knowledge and expertise to support this research. The inclusion of your voices in this report provides valuable insights and experiences from the field. Ngā mihi maioha kia koutou.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded through Ngā Pae o te Maramatanga under a Ngā Matakitenga grant [22MR15].