New Zealand Immersion

Map of New Zealand immersion learning sites and major concepts, with Maori colors and patterns.

"Mountains anchor us, rivers connect us." -Maori saying

For the last two courses of my master's degree, I participated in a Maori culture and permaculture immersion experience in New Zealand. It was led by Sustainable Communities professor Rosemary Logan, Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Institute founder Lilian Hill, Maori educator Ngārangi Marsh, and environmental professor Peter Horsley. 

By visiting sites where decolonization and reindigenization are occurring, it was easier to comprehend what that looks like and that it can actually happen. We were able to establish a sense of each place and its connections more quickly than if we simply read about them. Around New Zealand there is currently a lot of energy going into the regaining of cultural pluralism and connection to place, making it a great case study. 

The various blog posts linked below feature poems that integrate what I felt, learned, and read while in the different places. These are more reflective of my own personal experience, while links at the very bottom of this page provide more well-rounded contexts. Creating a blog and using mediums such as poems and drawings was one way for me to process the experience in a way that is natural and emotional, rather than adhering to the idea that there's only one way to have a final reflection on an experience (e.g. a formal paper). This was a very profound and intensive learning experience (typically ~9am to 9pm!) and these just barely touch the surface of each topic, but this blog is set up for me to elaborate on the discussions in the future. 

Poems of place:
"Maori culture is New Zealand culture that people choose not to be a part of." -Joy Shorrok

Joy's quote really stuck out to me because of its simple, straightforward reality. Indigenous cultures and a sense of place are here, and available for people to seek out, support, and be a part of. A race or group does not erase the history and identity of an area, it will always be there. 

"No land is peopleless or storyless and if, for a time, we forgot those stories and ignored those people, now it is time to remember whose land it was, to whom the manawhenua [those in connection with the land and its spiritual essence] has always belonged, even if the ownership rests, for now, in other hands." -James Ritchie in Becoming Bicultural

"There is cultural, managerial, spiritual and political residue in the land we must all respect." There are people out there who know these connections and we have a duty to recognize them and use them in our decisions surrounding place. This isn't always easy to do within colonized frameworks such as property and 40+ hour workweeks, but it's a necessary part of having a sense of place and being a part of the move towards decolonization. 

To provide context for understanding decolonization, reindigenization, and a sense of place within the lens of climate and human-induced climate change, I've created the following posts that connect my New Zealand experience with additional literature:

Connections of Concepts within the Lens of Climate
The drawing that I created (above) is entitled "Connections of Climate Change: What Wealth Will Humanity Choose?" It emphasizes the connections between the negative effects caused by colonization versus the connection between the healing effects of decolonization and reindigenization. While colonization operates on degradation, reindigenization focuses on the move back to more holistic ways of living that involve considerations of future generations. Two fundamentally different paradigms, humanity faces decisions of which paradigm it wants to follow and what is sacrifices or gains by revolutionizing or staying the same. These decisions directly affect the future capacities for climate change mitigations and adaptations. A similar visual dichotomy can be seen in the street art piece of Maori youth see below (Nelson, New Zealand). 


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