The Kāretu valley is situated near the Taumārere river, in the north of Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been the homeland of my tribal community of Ngāti Manu since our forced removal from our nearby coastal home of Ōtuihu in the Bay of Islands in 1845. Strategically located at the mouth of the Taumārere river, Ōtuihu was an important and valuable site for trade and transportation at the time. In 1845, however, Pomare II and his daughter Iritana were apprehended, chained to the mast of the North Star, and imprisoned on unfounded (and later redacted) grounds of treasonous activities. The people of Ngāti Manu, outnumbered by the British, were left fleeing from their homes. Their homes were destroyed. Pomare’s release was agreed only once he accepted the terms of the pardon offered to him by the Crown. Those terms restricted alliances with other Northern chiefs and required that Ngāti Manu cede their interests in their lands at Te Wahapu. As part of the later peace negotiations within Ngāpuhi and between Ngāpuhi and the Crown, even more land was ceded to the Crown—including the ancestral homeland of Ōtuihu.
Modern Aotearoa New Zealand was founded on the promise of partnership. In 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Te Tiriti or The Treaty) promised to uphold the customary authority, morality, and law of Māori communities—promising partnership between the British Crown and Māori Rangatira (chiefs). The hopes and aspirations of some 500 Māori chiefs who affixed their sacred marks to that document were, however, almost immediately nullified by the influx of settlers. In the years that followed, warfare, various policy and legal moves, and further land loss were widespread. The Native Land Act of 1862, for instance, in seeking to ensure the ‘peaceful settlement of the colony and the civilisation of the Natives’, took the view that individualisation of land title was required to do that. The Native Land Court of 1865 furthered this policy of individualisation by dispossessing tribal communities of ancestral land. Not only did these policies ensure that land could be bought and sold easily, but they intentionally destroyed the notion of community that lay at the heart of the Māori world. Land that was held in tribal ownership by Māori was replaced with a system that divided and vested land in exclusive title.
Today, a tiny fraction of Ngāti Manu descendants make their home in the Kāretu valley. Where there was once rich biological and cultural diversity, there is now urgent need for social, cultural, economic, and environmental regeneration. The Taumārere river, once home to a thriving ecosystem, is now one of the most polluted in the country.
In the Māori world, everything is situated within a complex system of relationships. All human beings, non-human animals, the natural environment, knowledge and practices, are situated in time-space relations. Whakapapa, the term used to capture this complex relational system, animates both connections and separations—the places where things meet and the spaces in between. What’s more, whakapapa captures the way in which these relationships are intergenerational or genealogically layered—connecting and separating past, present, and future.
This complex genealogical layering is fundamental to Māori philosophy too, both in terms of basic philosophical commitments and philosophical practice. As whakapapa draws out our connections and separations, Māori political philosophy finds meaning in and highlights the normative significance of these interactions. In so doing, Māori philosophy draws attention to the way that our principles, processes, and practices can enhance and/or diminish relationships. For instance, whakapapa provides a useful lens for understanding how particular philosophical commitments can lead us to misunderstand, or completely overlook, the importance of the natural environment in our thinking and practice. Whakapapa not only begins by recognising the relationality and relational value of all things but can provide a range of insights for how entities within the network ought to interact. Understanding the inner workings of the diverse relationships within which our lives are lived can give rise to how we might deepen our understanding of the kinds of responsibilities we have for relating well. Māori philosophy, by taking this complexity as basic, seeks to understand and capture the layering of normative values and intergenerational responsibilities embedded in this network of relationships.
One way in which these responsibilities are captured, is in terms of the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga. Kaitiakitanga can be understood as a collection of intergenerational responsibilities, grounded in philosophies and practices developed and enacted by tribal communities, to enable socio-environmental relationships and flourishing. The customary practices that enhance these relationships are the result of intimate place-based knowledge, and its intergenerational transfer. This can include such things as knowledge of traditional harvesting practices, inclusive of knowledge about where, when, and how (not) to harvest species throughout the year. It can also include knowledge of innovation and future opportunities in the face of contemporary challenges—such as, for instance, practices and planning that may protect the community given climate-induced social and environmental change.
The confluence of past, present, and future in Māori philosophical thought and practice is important for grounding and enabling responsiveness to changing circumstances and incorporating new ideas and innovative methodologies in fundamentally different situations. Innovation shapes the history and growth of Māori Philosophy itself—grounding the Pacific-Ocean voyages, the development of Māori knowledge, and the embedding of that knowledge in the landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand. Kaitiakitanga, thus, is an overarching concept that describes a rich and evolving tradition, inclusive of the cumulative socio-environmental knowledge and practice that Polynesian ancestors brought to Aotearoa New Zealand, that was further built on during early life here, and which continues to respond to the (ongoing) experiences of Māori communities today. Indeed, today, these practices rely on a range of (social, cultural, environmental, economic) activities and programmes developed by tribal members, from elders to youth. These practices, and thus kaitiakitanga, also rely on policies and legislation that enables rather than constrains these practices while recognising the importance of nurturing connections to a network of other communities both locally and globally too.
The significance of deep connections and yet responsiveness to change is found in many other indigenous philosophies and practices too. The Yawuru of Broome in north-western Australia contend that good connections with other people and the natural environment inclusive of ancestors and descendants play a central role in ‘mabu liyan’ or living a good life. Similarly, relationships as well as the need for cooperation and justice between all beings (past, present, and future) ground the (Indigenous North American) Anishinaabe good-living concept of ‘minobimaatisiiwin’. Intergenerational reciprocity in human interactions with nature is fundamental to the (Indigenous South American) Quechua good living notion of ‘allin kawsay’. For Indigenous peoples, navigating our complex intergenerational responsibilities to human and other living things in ways that continue to enrich our collective flourishing in and through time is fundamental.
Indigenous and other local communities have a long history of revising their practices and ideas in the face of major social and environmental change. Rebuilding and reconnecting community in the face of ever-growing community diaspora has been a driving force for the emergence and transformation of Māori health policy in Aotearoa New Zealand. Similarly, the Māori education movements, such as Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Māori, continue to do much to protect, reclaim, and revitalise language and practices. Developments in environment law, too, such as the granting of legal personhood and rights to natural entities do much to embed Māori philosophy and practices in law. Each of these examples has been the outcome of ongoing Māori tribal struggles. These recent legislative recognitions are, for instance, part of decades-long treaty settlements that centre, and seek to reclaim and enable relationships with rivers, mountains, and forested areas.
Flexibility in our philosophical systems and concepts is vital. Our contemporary challenges—climate change, pandemics, global poverty—require transformation of our theories and practices in profound ways. Ultimately, we need different foundations to take us into the future. We need space for different ideas, fresh perspectives, and local socio-environmental practices to be enabled. For Māori communities, and indigenous communities more generally, this flexibility is grounded in and enabled by the recognition of the need to navigate responsibilities to past, present, and future generations. Kaitiakitanga, for instance, does this not only by recognising historic and prevailing structural injustices and their legacy, nor by merely harnessing the intimate moments of socio-environmental connection so often overlooked in our interactions, but also by enabling the transformation of ideas and practices toward new imaginaries.
One of the ways in which Kaitiakitanga provides insights for global climate change is in the way that it calls for a broadening of our epistemic infrastructure to enable change. Kaitiakitanga recognises the importance of an ecosystem of knowledge-makers and knowledge-users from policymakers and academics, to activists and local community practitioners. As mentioned, legislative recognitions for natural entities (rivers, mountains, forested areas) are the result of decades long tribal struggles, scholarship around the inclusion of Māori concepts in law and policy, and the communities of practitioners that enact kaitiakitanga. Kaitiakitanga, thus, recognises that we need to strengthen relationships within this ecosystem to ensure we’re engaging in ways that ensure actual change occurs. As it currently stands, reforming our epistemic system and working in ways that recognise the knowledge expertise and needs of local community practitioners and activists, and empowering them to further pursue and realise change in the world, is essential.
Our philosophical practices have an important role to play here. To embed flexibility to the challenges we face now and that we may face in the future, we must nurture a wide variety of moral experiments in living. In philosophy, this requires that we create space for diverse philosophical methods and practices to enable conversations and learning across diverse philosophical traditions. Exploring the potential for learning between these, and other, systems of thought is critical to confronting the problems that we will face. We need a range of different knowledges, as well as the ability to push at the boundaries of what might be possible. Such engagement requires listening, relationship building, and recognition of different types of expertise in all the places they exist. Such a practice will enable collaborative philosophical undertakings with others at the intersections of different conversations within the field, with other disciplines, and with issues as they feature within communities.
This blog is based on the following forthcoming articles:
Grix, M., and Watene, K (in press). Communities and Climate Change: Why Practices and Practitioners Matter, in Ethics and International Affairs.
Watene, K. (in press). Kaitiakitanga: Toward an Intergenerational Philosophy, in Stephen Gardiner (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics.
Krushil Watene
Krushil Watene is a member of the Māori tribal communities of Ngāti Manu, Te Hikutu, and Ngāti Whātua o Orākei, and the island of Hunga, Vava’u in Tonga. She is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research contributes to high-level discussions of indigenous concepts in justice theorizing, grounded in research that demonstrates the central role of local communities.
