Search

This article investigates deep philosophical differences between the complex relational networks that underpin te Tiriti o Waitangi as originally written, debated and signed by the rangatira of various hapū and British officials in New Zealand in 1840, and the canonical re-framing of the Treaty as a binary ‘partnership between races’, or ‘between the Crown and the Maori race’, in the 1987 ‘Lands’ case judgment by the Court of Appeal, at the height of the neo-liberal revolution in New Zealand.After exploring comparative analyses of the colonial origins and uses of the idea of ‘race’, and the risks associated with binary framings of citizenship by race, ethnicity or religion in contemporary nation states, the article asks whether relational thinking and institutions – including tikanga and marae – might not offer more promising ways of understanding and honouring te Tiriti o Waitangi, and fostering cross-cultural experiments in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This paper explores the realities of voyaging as understood by early Polynesian navigators. The voyaging world of Kaveia, a contemporary navigator from Outlier Polynesia, as recorded by the anthrop...

I agree with Anja Schwarz and Lars Eckstein that ‘Tupaia’s Map is among the most important artefacts to have come from late 18th-century European–Indigenous encounters in the South Pacific region’ ...

In March and April 1923 the Dominion Museum undertook an ethnological expedition to the East Coast region of New Zealand’s North Island, which was initiated and hosted by politician and scholar Apirana Ngata. Along with researchers Johannes Andersen, Elsdon Best and Peter Buck (Te Rangihīroa), the Museum’s acting director, James McDonald, took photographs and made films which recorded the cultural practices and traditions of the Ngāti Porou people. These traces in manuscripts, photographs and movies of the relationships that shaped the expeditions still travel through space and time, spiralling into the future as they allow contemporary and future listeners and viewers to reconnect with the past. Although these people have long since died, they live on in McDonald’s films and photographs, along with the many Māori people from the communities they visited, in documentation of ways of life which provide invaluable resources for cultural heritage and contemporary tribal development today. In this paper, McDonald’s uri ‘descendant’ (his great-granddaughter Anne Salmond) and Billie Lythberg reconstruct the activities of the team on the expedition, drawing on a rich range of archival and other sources, and then reflect on the meaning of these “reflections” drawn with light on wax cylinders, nitrate film and paper, as well as current digital technology. Whether present in these recordings or as the eyes through which we see and the ears through which we hear, these hoa aroha ‘dear friends’—McDonald, Ngata, Buck, Andersen and Best—cannot be disentangled from the archive, the people who hosted them, and the whakaahua ‘images’ they created together.

In March 2017, the Te Awa Tupua Act passes by the New Zealand Parliament. In the Act, the Whanganui River, the longest navigable river in New Zealand, is described as "an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements." The idea of kinship with the Whanganui reflects in the Maori language sections of Te Awa Tupua Act. It relates relations between people and waterways. This act recognises for other ancestral water bodies in New Zealand. The river is a living community of fish, plants, people, ancestors and water links by whakapapa. In ancestral M-uori understandings, the relationship between people and the earth defines by whakapapa. In their report on the Whanganui River claim, the Waitangi Tribunal focused almost entirely upon this matter of rights in waterways–of the Whanganui kin groups on the one hand, and the Crown on the other.

In this article, I consider a series of exchanges and entanglements, convergences, and collisions involving ancestral Maori, Western, and modernist onto-logics in relation to fresh water in New Zealand. Maori (and by implication, non-Maori) rights to fresh water have been a topic of passionate, often confrontational debate, instigated by the privatization of local power companies. In an innovative response to a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal by Whanganui iwi (kin groups), the Whanganui River has been declared a legal being, one of the first rivers in the world to gain this status. In the Whanganui deed of settlement with the Crown, ancestral Maori and modernist framings are juxtaposed, despite being incommensurable in certain respects. Drawing upon divergent forms of order, participants in the process have sought to weave together a concerted approach toward the management of New Zealand's waterways. This interweaving avoids the need for a merging of horizons, a "theory of everything" in which only one reality is possible and only one set of assumptions about the world can prevail.

Water is a central element of social and material life, and the institutionscreated around water embody societal values. While mainstream interpretationsfocus on the quantity and quality of water, we argue that a greater risk to thehealth of waterways is the philosophical disconnection between people and water,expressed through institutions and technologies of alienation. A structural responsebased on cultural transformation is needed, cultivating diverse institutions of care thatenable communities to reconnect with their waterways based on more-than-economic relations. Te Awaroa seeks to transform long-term relationships betweenpeople and water to ensure that waterways and their communities alike are in a stateof ora (health, well-being and prosperity).Key words: community-based resource management, environmental politics,nature/culture, social change.Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko auI am the river, the river is meKei te mate te awa, kei te mate ahauIf the river is dying, so am I.[Ma¯ori saying]Water is a source of life and livelihood for allNew Zealanders.The physicality and meaningsof water – as ‘commons’, ‘private property’ or

When Captain James Cook's bark the Endeavour arrived in Tūranga-nui in October 1769, the local people were mystified. Many thought that this spectre had appeared from te pō, the dark realm of ancestors. Cook's scientific expedition, sponsored by the Royal Society, was accompanied by Tupaia, a high priest from Ra'iatea. Tupaia joined the ship in Tahiti, where Cook and his companions had observed the transit of Venus. At Tūranga, misunderstandings led to shootings, but when they arrived at Uawa (now Tolaga Bay), the expedition was welcomed ashore. Tupaia and his companions had many friendly exchanges with the priests from Te Rāwheoro, the local whare wānanga or school of learning, which specialised in carving and tattoo. This paper examines differences and resonances between Enlightenment science and philosophy and wānanga (Māori ancestral knowledge), and how exchanges between these knowledge traditions might open up possibilities for new kinds of futures.

In settler societies such as New Zealand, the relationships between indigenous groups and settlers whose ancestors arrived from Europe involve clashes and exchanges between those who hold different sets of presuppositions about how the world works. In early New Zealand, Māori and Europeans often found themselves at ontological cross-purposes, and such contestations are still common. In this paper, I explore fundamental divergences and resonances between ancestral Māori and modernist ontological styles, and how over the past two hundred years these have emerged in debates over the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between Māori rangatira (chiefs) and the British Crown in 1840; and over tapu (the sacred, or state of ancestral presence), land, citizenship and mana or power.

This is a polemical book that maintains an age-old argument frequently cited in the debates concerning ownership of the past. As a museum professional with a wealth of experience, James Cuno confidently asserts his belief in the 'encyclopaedic museum' concept, where museums are seen as institutions that display collections of antiquities as representative examples of the world's artistic legacy. Threats to the encyclopaedic museum, in the form of laws concerning the return of cultural property, deeply concern Cuno, and his fervent belief in the idea that antiquities are the common inheritance of all peoples leads him to challenge the nationalist claims on heritage by modern nation-states.

Gananath Obeyesekere. Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating Myth and Human Sacrifice in the South Seas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 320 pp.

This paper examines exchanges of navigational knowledge between Tahitian navigators and European explorers in the mid‐18th century. Although Tahitian and European sailors accomplished way‐finding at sea in ways based on very divergent assumptions about the ocean, the cosmos and persons, Tahitian navigators were able to board European ships, and pilot them safely through the islands. At first each side drew upon their own familiar practices to make sense of the other; using ostension or pointing, linguistic exchange and experience of each other’s vessels as bridgeheads to produce a kind of rough intelligibility. Much was lost, however, in these partial and approximate exchanges. Here, exchanges between European and Tahitian sailors and their very different knowledge systems are used to explore the intricacies of cross‐cultural encounters.

On 2 March 1815, on a hilltop in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, a rangatira (chief) named Ruatara lay dying. In his suffering, he complained to Thomas Kendall, a missionary who had travelled with him from Port Jackson (present-day Sydney), of ‘want of breath’ and pain. Because of his illness, Ruatara was prohibited from eating. When Kendall tried to persuade him to take some food, he replied ‘When breath comes, I shall eat’ (Thomas Kendall, Journal 1815, in Elder 1934: 75, 77).

Hanson, E Allan, and Louise Hanson. Counterpoint in Maori Culture. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. ix + 232 pp. including figure, glossary, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth. Breeneis, Donald, and Fred R. Myers, eds. Dangerous Words: Language and Politics in the Pacific. New York: New York University Press, 1984. xii + 284 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth, $16.50 paper.

This vivid book retells the story of Captain Cook's great voyages in the South Seas, focusing on the encounters between the explorers and the island peoples they "discovered." While Cook and his men were initially confounded by the Polynesians, they were also curious. Cook and his crew soon formed friendships-and often more intimate relationships-with the islanders. The islanders, who initially were not certain if the Englishmen were even human, came to experiment with Western customs and in some cases joined the voyagers on their expeditions. But familiarity quickly bred contempt. Shipboard discipline was threatened by these new relationships, and the culture of the islands was also changed forever. Captain Cook, initially determined to act as an enlightened leader, saw his resolve falter during the third voyage. Amicable relations turned hostile, culminating in Cook's violent death on the shores of Hawaii. In this masterful account of Cook's voyages, Anne Salmond-a preeminent authority on the history of the south seas-reimagines two worlds that collided in the eighteenth century, and the enduring impact of that collision.

Le film « Firth on Firth » propose une reflexion sur l'anthropologie et la vie de Sir Raymond Firth interviwe par Peter Loizos : ce film attachant mais statique s'interroge sur la difference culturelle.

The paper describes the development of a POE (post occupancy evaluation) programme for evaluating government buildings in New Zealand. The programme is being developed by a research team at the School of Architecture, VUW (Victoria University of Wellington), under a research contract from the New Zealand MWD (Ministry of Works and Development). The aim of the programme is to enable MWD and its client departments to assess the effectiveness of their buildings and of their delivery, operations and maintenance processes as part of their inhouse activities. The MWD regard the programme as a long term commitment. The VUW research team has therefore concerned itself with developing a flexible programme incorporating a robust evaluation process which can be used by non-expert personnel (in terms of POE experience) on a wide range of buildings. Such an evaluation process is now proposed and its initial testing is complete. This paper outlines that process and discusses the current status of the POE programme.