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Maori-Designed Airport

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2021| 4 Comments »

Photo: Patrick Reynolds.
The Maori-designed “redevelopment of New Zealand’s New Plymouth regional airport is a finalist in the Prix Versailles Airports 2021 awards,” the Guardian reports.

A modicum of justice is seen in an unlikely place: the redesign of an airport by indigenous people from whom the airport land was stolen as recently as 1960.

Eva Corlett reports for the Guardian, “A tiny regional airport in New Zealand that weaves a Māori story of love and longing into its architecture is in the running for a prestigious design award, up against international heavyweights including New York’s LaGuardia.

“Unesco’s Prix Versailles recognizes architecture that fosters a better interaction between economy and culture, and includes a range of categories from airports to shopping malls. The finalists for the airport category include the New York LaGuardia upgrade, Berlin’s Brandenburg airport and international airports in Athens, Kazakhstan and the Philippines.

“The sixth airport finalist is Te Hono – meaning ‘to connect’ – and is found in New Plymouth, a town with a population of 85,000, on the western shoulder of the North Island.

“After six design options were floated, Rangi Kipa – a member of the local Puketapu hapū (subtribe) and lead figure on cultural design, settled upon a story. ‘The Ascension from the Earth, Descending from the Sky,’ tells the story of Tamarau, a celestial being, who was so captivated by the earthly beauty of Rongo-ue-roa, a terrestrial being, that he came down to meet her.

“ ‘This story aligns closely with the creation narrative of Te Ātiawa iwi [tribe],’ said Rangi. …

“The spine of the building is oriented to represent the journey from the mountain to the river – the main ancestral walking track in this area, and while visitors may notice these aspects of the architecture first, there are many subtle stories told through the details.

“Manaakitanga – the Māori concept of hospitality – also influences the design. Campbell Craig, the project’s architect and associate for design at firm Beca, said the project attempted to challenge western architectural practices that do not bear any relationship to Māori design.

“ ‘It was important for Puketapu to welcome and take care of guests in a place that is in many ways the gateway to the region,’ said Craig. ‘The faceted curved forms of the building at the entrance and airside “embrace” travelers, to shelter them from the elements.’

“In 1960, the land the airport sits on was confiscated from Māori, under the Public Works Act to build an aerodrome. This was a major source of grievance for the hapū, who had urupā [burial grounds] on the site. …

“Kipa said: ‘For the most part, we have been invisible in our own landscape for 160 years, so it’s amazing to have the chance to influence, and give life to, some of the things that make us who we are.’

“For Craig, the most heartening aspect of the project was the intensive collaboration between Māori, the airport and the architects, which enabled a sense of collective ownership over it.

“ ‘The experience at Te Hono provided a blueprint for working with tāngata whenua [people of the land],’ he said, adding that it would be an approach embedded into all of their future projects.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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New Zealand Aims for Zero Carbon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 24, 2021| 8 Comments »

Photo: Stuff.
To meet methane goals, New Zealand must cut the number of sheep and cows by 15 per cent, the Climate Change Commission’s decarbonisation blueprint says.

Although I’m eating a vegetarian meal tonight, I’m disappointed in myself for not coming up with lots of interesting vegetarian recipes during lockdown. I had plenty of time to think about it. Part of my problem is that my Covid-era delivery services didn’t offer many prepared vegetarian meals, but it’s a weak excuse. Fortunately, my daughter-in-law knew I was interested in anything vegetarian and often added me to her shopping.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, they’re way ahead of everyone as usual — not only in terms of trying to cut back on livestock emissions but addressing many other aggressive climate-change goals.

Olivia Wannan writes at Stuff, “Whether you work on the land, in a factory, an office or are still in school, life in 2035 will look significantly different under the Climate Change Commission’s decarbonisation blueprint.

“[If] the Government follows it to the letter., by 2025, you’ll be eligible for a public transport card offering discounted fares until you’re 25, to encourage low-carbon transport habits that may last a lifetime. …

By 2023, the Government’s emissions standards will start to bring lower-carbon cars into the country. The ban on petrol and diesel cars will also be in place as early as 2030. By 2035, both restrictions will also be influencing the second-hand car market, so if you do become an owner, the vehicle will be a lot greener than the cars on the road today. …

“Between now and 2035, you may be one of the thousands of employees that will transition out of carbon-intensive industries and into new jobs. … If you work in an at-risk industry, you’ll be eligible for government support to be re-trained for other roles. If you’re tangata whenua, you’ll be able to opt for education and training developed by Māori. By 2035, many Māori workers will have already transitioned to new industries, with the job gains outweighing losses. …

“The renewable electricity sector will be busy – the country requires one new wind farm to be built almost every year to meet the increased demand for power, plus new transmission lines. …

“By 2035, most truck drivers will be behind the wheel of a low-emissions vehicle, after the battery technology has developed enough to cover longer distances. But there will be fewer trucking jobs, as more freight will travel by rail or sea. … You’ll be twice as likely to head to the office by bike or on public transport, compared to today. If you still want to drive to the CBD, you may have to pay a congestion charge, with your cash helping to fund lower-carbon forms of travel. …

“By 2035, your office must be a pleasant place to be in all seasons, courtesy of energy efficiency standards for new and existing buildings. Building owners will have ditched coal in all heating systems by 2030. Natural gas will be phased out after that. …

“Across the country, dairy and meat farmers will reduce animal numbers by 15 per cent between 2020 and 2030. However, this isn’t an across-the-board cut. The efficiency gains you’ll make on your farm will probably differ to what your neighbours achieve. It’s the collective effort that matters.

“This could mean changing your farm management. You’ll need to use the plans, advice and tools developed by the agricultural industry partnership with Government, He Waka Eke Noa – though this guidance won’t be finalised until 2022. You may require reliable internet to precision-manage your farm, so you should have access to broadband by 2023 at the latest. …

“A farm might take a look at the efficiency gains required and choose to replace its cows and sheep with horticulture. An additional 20,000 hectares of land will grow grain, fruit and vegetables by 2035.

“Farmers staying in the meat or dairy business will carefully manage their use of nitrogen fertiliser (which creates the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide) and supplementary feed, which will cut expenses. Some will try their hand at regenerative farming, which aims to create healthier soil and land.

“Sheep farms will select rams that carry the genes to produce less methane when food is digested. The widespread uptake of low-methane sheep breeds will cut the country’s agricultural methane by 3 per cent by 2035. …

“If you have unproductive land sitting around, you’ll be able to access public funding to plant it with native trees. Nearly 250,000 additional hectares of sheep and beef farmland will be afforested by 2035. Combined with a ban on native deforestation in 2025, you’ll more frequently spot native birds and lizards, particularly if you fence off your bush and undertake pest control.

“Collective action will allow New Zealand to continue to promote the comparatively low-carbon credentials of its dairy and meat to international markets. …

“Buildings will be increasingly constructed using timber, which is less emissions-intensive than concrete and steel. By 2025, new natural gas connections will be banned. A decade after that, remaining gas appliances for cooking or heating will be increasingly costly. Because the domestic carbon price will steadily rise, the average annual gas bill will cost $150 more in 2035 compared to 2020.

“In comparison, the price of electricity will drop during the 2020s, after the Tiwai smelter closes. It’ll gradually rise again towards the end of the decade but should stay lower than today’s costs. …

“Remote and Māori communities will be able to access funds to build their own solar generation.”

It will likely to be hard to achieve all that, even with the less environmentally friendly biomass use and burning of “renewable” wood. But I think they are taking this seriously.

More at Stuff, here. Hat tip: Svein Tveitdal, @tveitdal, on twitter.

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How a Maori Mindset Crushed Covid

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 14, 2021| 7 Comments »

Photo: University of Canterbury.
Maoris teach that we’re all in the same canoe, an understanding that enough New Zealanders have absorbed to make Covid restrictions successful there.

I don’t know much about the Maoris of New Zealand (does the Disney movie Moana count?), but having seen how successful New Zealand and its prime minister have been in dealing with Covid, I’m not surprised to learn that the high level of cooperation among the populace relates to absorption of Maori values.

In an opinion piece at the Washington Post, Matthew Milner and Richard Ngata explain.

“Life in New Zealand is almost back to normal. While the United States has seen more than half a million deaths from covid-19 — with a death rate of more than 160 per 100,000 of population — New Zealand has lost only 26 people at a rate of 0.53 per 100,000.

“Two months ago, one of us, Richard, went to a New Year’s festival with more than 12,000 fellow revelers — something barely imaginable in the United States, where most concerts are online-only. Meanwhile, teachers, including Matthew’s parents, have been instructing in person since May [2020] without requiring masks or social distancing measures.

“Why has New Zealand fared so much better? Many people argue that these differences stem from New Zealand’s geographic advantages, and there is no doubt that being an island nation has helped. But … there is a deeper reason: Manaakitanga.

“While New Zealand hasn’t always been great at recognizing or celebrating our indigenous Māori culture, campaigning by Māori advocates has helped to ensure that Māori culture is now well-incorporated into society.

Manaakitanga is one of many customs of the Māori people that are now taught in New Zealand schools. It holds that others have importance equal to, and even greater than, one’s own.

“Manaakitanga is about understanding the power of the collective. It derives from the Māori term ‘mana,’ which is the spiritual life force and energy that every living thing possesses. When you honor the mana of others, your own mana will increase through the respect you have earned. When you acknowledge these connections, you understand that your freedom as an individual is only as strong as your place in the community.

“This community approach underpins many aspects of life in New Zealand. We provide health care to anyone who needs it. Our gun safety laws focus on keeping the community safe. And manaakitanga is one of four key values the Teachers Council for New Zealand wants teachers to focus on in the classroom.

“But never has the importance of manaakitanga to our society been more evident than at the start of the covid-19 pandemic. Last March, when New Zealand went into full lockdown, people were not permitted to see others outside their ‘bubble’ (such as a household); only one person from each bubble could leave at any given time, and not travel farther than five miles from the house.

“This strict lockdown lasted six long weeks, and while there was political pushback, the ‘team of 5 million,’ as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calls New Zealanders, stayed home and stamped out the virus.

New Zealanders were willing to give up many of their individual freedoms and face personal hardship for the benefit of the community. …

“Still, people found ways to connect and support each other. The lesson of the coronavirus is that an individual approach is not sufficient and that it takes a team for us all to gain true freedom. The Māori proverb ‘He waka eke noa’ expresses these sentiments clearly: We are all in this canoe together. …

“While [the US president] was playing down the virus, Ardern was running daily broadcasts alongside the nation’s director-general of health to clearly communicate the latest updates and restrictions. The central message: ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe, Be Kind.’ ” More at the Washington Post, here.

If you want to dig deeper, check out research by Diane Ruwhiu and Graham Elkin at the Leadership journal on the “converging pathways of contemporary leadership,” here. The authors describe “two emerging domains in leadership – servant leadership and Indigenous Māori leadership. Both not only have strong resonance with each other,” they say, “but also reflect a common concern with individual and collective morality that draws us to the significance of human relationships.”

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No Home, No Library Card

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 7, 2017| 4 Comments »

Photo: Getty
Auckland Libraries in New Zealand figured out why their books were going missing and came up with a win-win solution.

If you know how to read, you want to read, and librarians want you to read. But not everyone has easy access to books. That is why some readers in New Zealand were sneaking books.

Mark Molloy writes at the UK’s Telegraph, “A New Zealand library has finally solved the mystery of why some books were going missing from its shelves.

“Auckland Libraries staff were bewildered after finding some books were being hidden in random places. They initially thought kids playing pranks were to blame, but later discovered it was the city’s rough sleepers who were actually stashing the books so they could return the next day to continue reading.

“ ‘A lot of our street community were wanting to put them underneath the couches or underneath book shelves and kind of hiding them in various places,’ librarian Sean Taylor told TV NZ. … Without a permanent address they were unable to sign up for a library card that would allow them to take the literature away.

“As a solution, Auckland Library created a new section where books can now be left overnight and picked back up again the next morning. …

“ ‘They are really well read. We’ve got a guy who I’ve had a discussion about the meanings of words and we’ll talk about the reference section and it’s the kind of intellectual conversation you’d expect from an academic.’ …

“Auckland Library says it sees itself as a ‘home for the homeless’ and holds regular cinema screenings and a book club for those sleeping rough. …

“ ‘One guy told me he moved to the city several years ago, and that none of his family back home knew he was homeless,” [said Rachel Rivera, manager of Auckland Libraries]. He used our computers to keep in touch with them. It was his lifeline to his family,’ she said.

“ ‘They value our service, like many of our communities do, for different reasons. But they don’t always feel safe and welcome, and that is something we can and should take steps to address.’ ”

More at the Telegraph, here. And look: Everything at the Auckland libraries website is in both English and Maori.

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Film “Moana” Boosts a Native Language

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »


Birgit Krippner for the New York Times
Allan Tipene and his wife, Desiree Tipene, with their children and others in New Zealand. Ms. Tipene called “Moana” a “funny and beautiful” way for her children to connect with their culture. 

The cartoon film Moana is playing a role in the push to preserve indigenous languages — one language in particular.

Charlotte Graham writes at the New York Times about the Moana translation being shown in New Zealand.

“The families lined up at the theater above a shopping mall here in New Zealand’s biggest city [for] a film unlike any they had ever seen — the Disney hit ‘Moana,’ translated into the indigenous language of New Zealand. …

“About 125,000 of New Zealand’s 4.7 million people speak the Maori language, or ‘te reo Māori,’ as it is widely rendered here. There are concerns that numbers are declining, putting it at risk of dying out. But with one in three Maori people in New Zealand younger than 15, experts said the chance for youth to see a wildly popular movie in their own words could turn the language’s fortunes around after more official efforts faltered. …

“ ‘Moana’ [is] the story of a Polynesian princess, Moana, on an adventure with her chicken, Heihei, and the demigod Maui …

“Many of those attending in Manukau, in southern Auckland, said they had never seen a film at the theater entirely in their language before.

“Several of the families there came from nearby Manurewa, a district usually in the news for unemployment, homelessness and poverty. Parents entering the theater said they relished the chance for their children to see themselves and their language reflected on the big screen, in a different kind of story that they hoped would instill pride in being Maori. …

“ ‘Language is the expression of a culture and a race of people,’ [Haami Piripi, a former head of the government body charged with the promotion of te reo Māori as a living language] said. ‘To retain your language is an emblem of survival through history. If you’ve still got your language now, you have the key to your culture.’ …

“Katarina Edmonds, a senior lecturer in Maori education at the University of Auckland, and one of three people who translated the film, said the team worked not only to find the exact equivalents of words in the Disney script, but also to remain true to the Maori language and tikanga, or cultural values.”

More at the New York Times, here.

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