Dr Mawera Karetai

In response to Keith Melville’s letter (Beacon, March 13) about the kumara research project, based on information he read on the Taxpayer’s Union website.

The two-year project (dated 2020-2022) you wrote about was called: Māra Tautāne – Revitalisation of traditional hapū practices, and was funded by the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge.

The five-person research team, through Massey University, was awarded $156,000 for the two-year project. The outputs were really interesting to read/watch, and are as follows:

n A storymap, which gives a background ground on revitalising customary practices of growing kai, shows the land loss through confiscation that Tūhoe are still living with, the background of the project, and the project itself. It answers all your questions.

Tassell-Matamua, N & Kora, A. (2023). Te Māra Tautāne. Revitalising a customary practice. ArcGIS Online, DOI: https://arcg.is/15CTCH

■ A journal article by two of the five researchers examines the revitalisation of māra tautāne (ceremonial communal gardens) within the Tūhoe community of Te Māhurehure in Rūātoki, arguing that restoring these traditional gardening practices is a powerful vehicle for re-energising wider indigenous knowledge, cultural identity, and relationships to whenua disrupted by colonisation and land confiscation.

Drawing on a case study of contemporary efforts to re-establish communal gardens and associated rituals, the authors show how māra kai is embedded in a holistic Māori worldview in which gardening nurtures social co-hesion, spirituality, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and environmental sustainability, rather than simply producing food. They contend that such projects not only strengthen local wellbeing and self-determination, but also demonstrate the wider signifi-cance of indigenous knowledge revitalisation for ecological resilience and decolonising knowledge systems in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond

Tassell-Matamua, N Boasa-Dean, T & McEntee, M. (2023). Indigenous knowledge revitalisation: Indigenous gardening and its wider implications for the people of Tūhoe. Knowledge Cultures, 1, 98-114.

■ A documentary, called Māra Tautāne. The 25-minute documentary has some great messages and is full of information about kai-growing traditions and practices. It has subtitles, so don’t worry if you don’t speak te reo Māori – it is for everyone to engage with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aXxwq1Dt6I

And finally,

■ An e-book called Maara Tautāne, which is a helpful, accessible, beautifully produced handbook on the establishment of this maara – the first of this kind to be established in Rūātoki in over 300 years. What a wonderful thing to celebrate, don’t you think?

A quick Google search gives all this information.