Pipe dreams
The fetid origin story of Wellington’s struggling sewerage system.
The fetid origin story of Wellington’s struggling sewerage system.
Fifty years ago, the government was burning swathes of native forest, using napalm as an accelerant. But under one particular forest was a hill, and under that hill was a system of caves filled with the bones of the dead: moa, giant eagles, tiny songbirds. If the forest went, the fossils would go, too.
Mason Ball, HarperCollins, $45
Cyclone Gabrielle hit the East Coast hardest, monstering homes and roads and families. As the storm ate its way across Te Urewera and a forest named for taniwha, it also brought long-buried bones to the surface.
Louise Maich, Bateman Books, $49.99
Why is there a knee-high strip of concrete in the middle of Lewis Pass?
Suzanne Heywood, HarperCollins, $37.99
Jeremy Hansen and Jade Kake, Massey University Press, $75
After decades of snubs and stonewalling, Britain’s monarch finally visits Tūrangawaewae.
The difference between exploring and being lost is the ability to return home. Te Rā tells the story of Māori voyaging and weaving technology, and has finally returned home—for now.
After the Grafton wrecked on Auckland Island, three men built and sailed a vessel to Stewart Island. Two men left on the island were subsequently rescued, which rallied state governments in Australia to search for more shipwreck victims, deploying the HMCS Victoria. In Erebus Cove the trunk of a rātā tree was chiselled flat and an inscription was carved into the wood: ‘H.M.C.S. VICTORIA NORMAN IN SEARCH OF SHIPWRECKED PEOPLE OCT 13TH 1865’. The crew also released goats and rabbits on Enderby Island to provide food for castaways, but no further survivors were found.
The cemetery at Enderby Island marks the location of the ill-fated settlement of Harwicke, started farm workers, shipwrights, a surgeon and others in 1849. But crops proved impossible to grow, livestock were hard to muster and whaling didn’t meet the outgoings to feed the settlors. It was abandoned after two years and nine months, during which there were five weddings, sixteen births and two infant deaths—including three-month-old Isabella Younger, whose headstone is made of a mill wheel brought by settlers to mill grain that never grew.
Almost two centuries after its discovery, an enigmatic bell is bringing communities together.
Women And Photography In Aotearoa New Zealand 1860–1960. Lissa Mitchell, Te Papa Press, $75.00
Down in southern Te Waipounamu where I’m from, before European contact the fishing grounds had names. Tau-o-te-kāeaea, a reef where rays congregated. Hāpuka, off Ōraka where, well, hāpuka were caught. We fished from waka and earned mana serving abundant catches. Access was managed via whānau and hapū rights; in some areas these wakawaka, or allocations, stand today. We told stories about fishing, and at times fought wars over fishing rights. Later generations went to sea in sealing and whaling boats. Parties traversed Fiordland in ‘Maori boats’—big enough to pull up the beach and sleep under. From the 1940s, Ōtākou Fisheries ran 50 boats out of every port from Tīmaru to Jackson’s Bay. We were there in the southern crayfish boom of the 50s and 60s. My cousins ran cray boats in Fiordland more recently. Customary harvests overlapped with commercial activities throughout. This unbroken whakapapa of fishing only exists thanks to endless fights to preserve small scraps of the exclusive and undisturbed access to fisheries all iwi were promised under the Treaty. It’s a shadow of the rich fishing that should have been guaranteed. But the fishing grounds still have their names. The biggest recent fight was the Māori Fisheries Settlement. Local rights mutated into something more abstract: tribal entities ended up owning quota atomised across all of Aotearoa’s waters—though the end goal of providing for the people remains the same. Proceeds help capitalise other iwi businesses, and fund programmes promoting health, wellbeing and culture. That’s the kai that fisheries put on Māori tables today. So, when proposals for marine sanctuaries arrive that bear no resemblance to Māori concepts, or undermine connections to place, or are announced unilaterally at the UN to score political points, or seen as further eroding Treaty rights, or walking back previous commitments, it’s not surprising they’re rejected by iwi. That’s what just happened to the latest Government offer for a Kermadecs Ocean Sanctuary—a complex story we explore. But that isn’t the end of the conversation. It can’t be. There is overwhelming evidence that our oceans are in serious decline, that environmental disasters disproportionately affect indigenous communities, and that marine protection works—scientifically. What’s needed is to figure out how it can work culturally, and be co-designed in a way that doesn’t further dispossess indigenous peoples. From what we can understand from the outside, the iwi representatives who rejected the Crown’s Kermadecs proposal didn’t see it as an ending either. There was general support for marine protection, and another hui is in the works to begin figuring out what that might look like, starting from Māori first principles. We can only guess at some of the ideas that will be on the table, but they could include concepts of Papatūānuku or Tangaroa rather than ‘the environment’. It could include restraining fishing using time-based, reviewable rāhui rather than perpetual closures, or buying out and retiring quota to honour the Fisheries Settlement. It could mean prioritising rangatiratanga and connection to place, customary harvesting, or whānau involvement in monitoring and ranger jobs. It could involve scientific research and partnerships, and make use of decades of hard-won knowledge about what’s worked elsewhere—including the fact that protected areas boost overall fish stocks and catch rates. Whatever form this takes, it has to enhance the mana of our oceans, and all peoples. It also has to be done urgently. While no new rāhui or protected areas are implemented, oceans remain in freefall. We hope the Māori fisheries representatives who gathered in Wellington in June use their rangatiratanga to drive this forward, take on the best science, and figure it out.
Five decades ago, a TV show changed the national psyche.
Geoff Chapple and Miriam Beatson didn’t tell anyone except the minister that they were getting married on February 14, 1988. Everyone else was simply invited to Cheltenham Beach in Devonport: “Please join Geoff and Miriam in a St Valentine’s Day celebration—bring your own champagne picnic.” Robin and Dinah Morrison had an invitation like anyone else—as good friends. Geoff didn’t ask Robin to photograph the event, but maybe he should have known. Robin brought his Nikon and got the shot of the day, featuring the newlyweds’ five-year-old son, Amos (now a photographer himself), clearing away streamers in front. And maybe the secrecy thing had slipped a bit. Someone threw rice. This issue, Geoff Chapple writes about the re-publication of Robin Morrison’s seminal 1981 book The South Island of New Zealand from the Road.
How a town called Maxwell got—and lost—its name.
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