Artistic practice, public awareness, and the ngahere: art–science–Indigenous Māori collaborations for raising awareness of threats to native forests

Abstract

We build a rationale for a nuanced approach to raising public awareness of ecological threats through interweaving art, science, and Mātauranga Māori (Indigenous Māori knowledge). The thinking we present emerges from the first phase of a transdisciplinary project, Toi Taiao Whakatairanga, which explores the ways the arts can raise public awareness of two pathogens that are ravaging native trees in Aotearoa New Zealand: Phytopthora agathidicida (kauri dieback) and Austropuccinia psidii (myrtle rust). One of our first steps in the project was to explore understandings of "public” and “awareness” and their relevance to Aotearoa’s ecological, cultural, and political context. This collective task was about developing theory to guide the second phase of the project, in which we would commission nine Māori artists to create new works about kauri dieback and/or myrtle rust. One of the key outcomes of our collective inquiry was a realization of the limits of certain conceptions of public awareness in the settler–colonial contexts. For example, conceptions based on an unproblematized definition of “public” fail to respond adequately to the rights of Indigenous Māori tribes and subtribes to sovereignty over their lands and taonga species. We identify the need for alternatives to transactional conception of public awareness-raising. This includes alternatives that align with te ao Māori (Māori worldviews) and allow for a lack of consensus about the nature of an ecological threat or the required response. We propose that mātauranga Māori and arts practices can be combined with colonial science knowledge to promote different awarenesses in ways that are responsive to difference audiences, acknowledge different knowledge systems, hold space for contested/provisional knowledge, and support the mana motuhake of iwi/hāpū and the ngahere.

Keywords

• aotearoa new zealand
• arts practice
• colonial science
• ecological threats
• indigenous knowledge
• public awareness