Biocultural Diversity: Wellington

"Communicating biodiversity is certainly about counting threatened species, but it's also about counting threatened cultures, languages, and belief systems and valuing the differing knowledge systems that we all bring with us." -Sandy Gauntlett in Te Ao Marama (The World of Light): Understanding Indigenous Biodiversity Management in a World Under Threat

Geothermal activity in the valley just west of Rotorua, NZ— an area exploited by sheep and dairy farming and for its geothermal heat; Te Puia, a geothermal valley and Maori cultural center also exploited for its geothermal heat. Many geyers and geothermal springs have become dormant here because of the exploitation.  Te Puia and the associated Maori Arts & Crafts Institute help to carry on the biocultural diversity of the area.

what took tens of thousands of years to create,

colonizers have massacred in hundreds

cultural and biological diversity, once inseparable and always intertwined,

were weakened by the concepts of colonization

colonization, perhaps the most intense and precise evil to consume the world in its recent history

what can be worse than trading the magic of place for short-lived power and comparatively cheap thrills?

place being the particular magic of people, physical features, and spirit that every location once radiated and that still remains in essence

now the beams of intricately in-sync systems are often obscured by the darkness that is colonizer ideology,

an ideology that ravages the indigenous magic of a place for short-term gain,

that touts the lies of convenience and efficiency but produces a dark cloud of damaging externalizes

many people are kept distracted by artificial happiness and propaganda,

and do not know how to see this cloud

they're so used to it being cloudy that they don't know all of the light that's missing

~

though everything is currently disrupted by the cloud of colonization,

indigenous peoples hold ancient ways of seeing the world

though I feel the pain this cloud brings,

I do not feel its effects like those who've held a deeper connection with their land

for New Zealand, that's each Maori iwi

their knowledges provide lenses with which one can glimpse what exists without the cloud,

though many of these knowledges have been stolen from them

colonizer humans⁠— predominantly white⁠— have brutally forced their blind way of interacting with the world onto others,

and brought about effects such as degradation, loss of biocultural diversity, and rapid climate change