5. How can we generate a big picture vision that inspires local action?
Can we deepen our knowledge of Aotearoa-indigenous placemaking in a way that unites and uplifts all of us?
In this chapter I explore concepts of whakapapa. Rangitāne O Wairarapa and Ngāti Kahungungu ki Wairapapa are mana whenua here, their whakapapa is living here. Understanding, protection and respect for this is essential for any future co-creative partnerships in the natural and built environment.
“Somewhere in the line of history, civilisation has made a wrong turn, a detour that had led into a cul de sac. The only way, they felt, was to drop out and go all the way back to the beginning, to the primal source of consciousness, the true basis of culture: the land.”
— Robert Houriet, excerpted in How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
What is whakapapa?
An explanation from Te Ara The Encyclopedia of New Zealand begins: “Whakapapa is a taxonomic framework that links all animate and inanimate, known and unknown phenomena in the terrestrial and spiritual worlds. Whakapapa therefore binds all things. It maps relationships so that [they] are organised, preserved and transmitted from one generation to the next” (Taonui).
Whakapapa means “the process of laying one thing upon another” (Ngata, Te Ara). It is the core of te ao, mātauranga and tikanga Māori (Māori world view, knowledge and customary practice). We are probably most familiar with human genealogical strands of whakapapa, which are important for forging kinship connections (Te Ara). These strands are part of a greater whakapapa ecosystem where all of creation is connected genealogically (Wixon, Rameka, Te Ara). Creation genealogies are the foundation from which all whakapapa derive. Genealogies of creation also vary among iwi, rohe and tohunga (tribes, regions and experts) (Te Ara, Ngā atua). Being genealogically connected to all things means being and belonging are inextricably linked. From this perspective people are not superior to anything in their environment but related, through whakapapa, to all aspects of it (Rameka).
In his 2020 article “Whakapapa centred design explained”, Māori designer Karl Wixon (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Moriori and Pākeha) described whakapapa as the matrix “at the very heart of Māori ontology (nature of being)”; the “connection between people and place…past, present and future bound as a single continuum within which we are temporary actors whose decisions will have inter-generational consequence”. He ties practice and place together. “We exercise whakapapa through tikanga (customary practice), enabled by place-based knowledge”.
For Wixon, whakapapa continues to evolve into many practice forms, in its own right, in response to, and complementary to western knowledge. He employs whakapapa practices to “design futures and make shift happen” (Wixon). He helped develop Te Korekoreka (discussed in chapter 4), a Kāi Tahu iwi-specific explanation of whakapapa for future-making, shared universally to all who want to learn “this ancient and new way of working”. There is fresh ground here. “When we bring knowledge systems together some magic often happens, unlocking new thinking and insights and helping fuel innovation” (Wixon).
Temporal concepts of whakapapa
‘Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua — I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’ is a whakatauki (proverb) and a metaphor for a whakapapa way of seeing. “From a Māori perspective, the past and the present are knowable, and so are viewed as in the forefront of human consciousness, whereas the future cannot be seen and therefore is conceived of as ‘behind’” (Rameka).
Anaru Ah Kew (Waikato-Tainui, Kai Tahu) is a transition design practitioner working in diverse settings including health, tertiary education and local government placemaking. In a 2020 Field Guide interview for Design Assembly (a leading platform for Aotearoa New Zealand designers), he explains how this whakapapa way of seeing applies to placemaking. “Generally, with urban design practices, they only think in the now, and they think within 30-year cycles. They think that’s a long period. When we bring indigenous thinking, in seven generations we’re spanning 500 years, and we’re looking back in order to go forward. (Three generations in the past — then we look at now — and then we think about three generations into the future). This lens is nothing new to Māori, but when we bring this sort of thinking to the table currently, it’s seen as fresh thinking. It buzzes people out when we say, ‘actually this is just the way we (Māori) always think.’”
Whakaoriori local concepts of whakapapa
Rangitāne O Wairarapa (mana whenua) explain the concept of whakapapa to our community by “flipping a family tree”. Rather than starting with ourselves and working back by generation, whakapapa starts at the atua (natural environments and key energy sources) and makes its way down. “That makes us like a big family who share something in common. We all live on the earth underneath the sky” (Atuatanga C13). The analogy then expands using features we recognise in the Wairarapa whenua (landscape).
“Everything has a whakapapa. Everything starts from the top and comes down. A simple way to understand this is to think of water on a mountain. The first drop hits the top of the mountain and freezes together with many more drops. This ice has a form and a name. Further down the mountain the ice changes until it starts to melt…It takes on different appearances and flows as water and reaches a plain at the bottom and has a name. The sequence from top to bottom is the whakapapa of the water” (Atuatanga C13).
Many Te Kauru-Wairarapa local whakapapa concepts and kupu (words) in Atuatanga and other Rangitāne Education shared resources are explained in relation to specific Wairarapa places we encounter. Their tone is mana enhancing and accessible. When combined with Ngati Kahungungu Ki Wairarapa wānanga (learning) through pūrakau, this feels like a welcoming place for all of Whakaoriori Masterton to find and contribute hidden stories.
Western-derived methods for understanding place
Modern and active knowledge-gathering methods described from a western perspective offer insightful contributions for urban placemaking, particularly for the assessment of existing built environments. Urban studies luminary Jane Jacobs—Canadian-American journalist, theorist and activist—criticised the 20th century discipline of city planning, instead promoting a social design approach. Jacobs’ active methods for creating better urban environments have continued to amplify globally. Can these inform the development of Whakaoriori Masterton bi-cultural methods?
“There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.”
—Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Experiential-walking: same place, different perspectives
Experiential-walking is a “learning process” for “sensing and communicating the city for urban design purposes”. It is described in a 2021 report by its developer, Italian architect and academic Barbara Piga, and published as part of a civil engineering book series.
In Piga’s process, participants first walk alone for sensory exploration (an ‘instinctive walk’), then repeat the walk for self-reflection and interpretation (a ‘rational walk’). They then come together, sharing in small groups to form ‘metaphorical walks’ which contribute to the development of a collective vision.
In her architectural students Piga observed the temptation to get technical too early, skipping right to the generation of physical ideas (Piga 195). She describes the goals of the process: to investigate the sensory characteristics of a place in order to inform urban design conceptions; and to instil in participants a renewed sensitivity. “When we learn to perceive differently or with a new perspective, it is then difficult to ignore it” (Piga 190).
Psychogeography: observation as data
Hīkoi as a placemaking process shares threads with psychogeography (blending the psychological with the geographical), a modern method for experiencing and recording the living effects of built-up environments.
A core tenet of the psychogeographical method is to drift through urban space by foot, ditching our well-worn routes in favour of wandering around. Fixed sites become backdrop so the environments and occurances between sites come into focus. Like hīkoi, it’s both a social activity and a data gathering method. Sydney cultural studies scholar Siobhan Lyons describes ‘psychogeographic adventurers’ in Sydney doing fun activities to re-enchant overlooked spaces, including ‘psychogeographic readings’ to “traverse the memory divide…history written over and unnoticed by tourists, and forgotten by locals” (Lyons).
Also in common with hīkoi is purpose and activism by walking. Put simply, just walking around town today can be considered an act of insurgency or advocacy, when the pathways provided for walking are mainly fringes, the byproduct of roads built primarily to ensure the efficient flow of fast machines, not the slow walker. In the book Psychogeography, a collection of articles “an insurgent against the contemporary world, an ambulatory time traveller” (Self).
“This is what makes psychogeography a particularly useful critique beyond mere urban re-enchantment. Psychogeography thrives as an interrogation of space and history; it compels us to abandon — at least temporarily — our ordinary conceptions of the face value of a location, so that we may question its mercurial history.”
Canadian/French artist Larissa Fassler blends “the geography of space with the ethnography of place” (Uncube) to map a roundabout in Berlin using psychogeographic observation. Fassler’s notated collages come from multiple visits, layered together to capture the experience of this space.
Fassler’s work demonstrates how data can be represented visually in specific places we recognise. Data represented by text, symbols or graphs require extra mind loops to connect to places. Speculative work produced by community workshops like Douglas Park School’s Open Street concept (Our Future Masterton, refer Chapter 3) may seem unsophisticated compared to computer renderings, but use a visual language well traversed by urban and architectural design professions. The mission is maintaining this voice through to developed designs.
Common threads — bi-cultural placemaking in Aotearoa
Hīkoi, experiential-walking and psychogeography all ask us to communicate what we experience or want to experience in a place. They are tools for more deeply, more collectively sharing and defining why we want change before we jump into what the change might be. In Whakaoriori Masterton’s dominant placemaking systems we dabble in this rich ground, but quickly move on without a well investigated ‘why’. Minus this education, preconceived or personal interest rushes into the vacuum. The experience we yearn for is diluted. We remain rudderless.
Tony Garstang’s walking tours (discussed in chapter 2) bring together whakapapa methods (hīkoi), the insurgency of psychogeography (not your normal paths) and the light bulb moments of experiential-walking (alternate stories in the same space). We can add many more story layers using these methods, and to the maps we create to see our place.
“You are standing on one of the secrets of the town,” Tony Garstang says.
He is the leader of the guided tour of the Waiwaka Stream in Masterton.
It’s cold. There are about 20 of us wrapped up warm on Cornwall St.
We are ready to embark on an unforgettable adventure.
As it turns out, the secret we are standing on [is] the Masterton fault line.
‘There will be a few surprises on this walk and a lot of things you’ll see today that you probably didn’t realise were right under your nose here in Masterton,’ Garstang says.”
— Excerpt from “Secrets of the stream network”, a Wairarapa Times Age article by Emily Ireland
A case study: Tauhara II (2011)
Ngāti Tūwharetoa iwi and hapū whakapapa to Tauhara as their maunga. A partnership of the iwi trust and Contact Energy would see a steamfield power station built into its foothills. Rather than viewing the built structures in isolation or 10 square kilometre property as the meaningful margins, the project aimed to recognise and regenerate the site’s cultural landscape, “contoured landform, architectural criteria and revegetation of washouts…in counterpoint to the Mount Tauhara volcanic cone”. With iwi on the design team, landscape architects Isthmus Group saw this project as “an invitation to a more proactive design approach…to avoid effects (or at least greatly diminish them) rather than merely mitigate.” Details of the built structure emerged as a consequence of the landscape, not despite it (Barrett 208).
This was infrastructure that would grow and change over time. It resulted in two delivered design approaches, one fixed concept design for the power station, and one flexible set of controls and assessment criteria for future adaptive management: a pattern language described as protocols.
“Features will evolve as the steamfield is developed, and are likely to change over time…The protocols cover such things as alignment of pipelines with landform, contouring and rehabilitation of earthworks, management of land within pipeline corridors, location of well-heads relative to houses, and use of contouring and planting to reduce the prominence of [structures] when they are viewed from roads and houses.”
(Barrett 213)
Could we adopt a two-part process like this for our township? To assess the whenua impact of big projects, then assess the developments that grow around them over time? How can whakapapa inspire a community?
A case study: Horowhenua farming community (2017)
In 2017 Bryant, Allen & Smith developed and applied Whakapapa Informed Design methods for a project with a Horowhenua coastal farming community adapting to climate change. The research was “as much about a search for new culturally appropriate methods to challenge thinking and help communicate the urgency of climate change as it was about finding solutions” (Bryant 501). For this project art and design disciplines joined forces for “bridging the gap between worldviews” (Bryant 498). The work employed whakapapa, hīkoi (walking and talking in landscape) and kōrero tuku iho (ancestral knowledge shared through story-telling) as interconnected methods for knowledge creation, collection and dispersal. The project combined this with western landscape knowledge — mainly biospheric data. The authors referred to Fikret Berkes’ view of the difference between western scientific and indigenous knowledge systems: the first about content, the second, process.
Workshops, wānanga and hui (meetings) similar to Our Future Masterton were components. How did this come together?
Ultra compelling line-graphics and maps were produced to communicate a 400,000 year story of their site — a big-picture context! Even though they’re static images the graphics feel like movement through time, “what looks still is nevertheless in flux” (Bryant). The images demonstrate that quantitative data can be illustrated for a qualitative, experiential effect.
Te Tangi a te Manu (2022)
The people and methods used in these cases contributed to a kind how-to manual for Aotearoa New Zealand’s landscape architecture profession, Te Tangi a te Manu — Aotearoa New Zealand Landscape Assessment Guidelines. “The best collective knowledge of landscape architects working in landscape assessment under New Zealand’s legislative framework”. Could this help us assess a whole township like Whakaoiori Masterton?
The Guidelines state their kaupapa (philosophy) up front: “As we continue to evolve our unique practice, we must appreciate and respect the qualities of landscapes, including our understanding of the rich intricate threads that bind landscape and people together — the ideology of whakapapa.” The guidelines separately define western concepts of landscape and tangata whenua concepts, then show how they overlap to become one “shared concept” of whenua (Lister 72) for placemaking across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Western dimensions of place:
Physical: the physical environment, its collective natural and built components and processes
Associative: the meanings and values we associate with places
Perceptual: how we perceive and experience placesTangata whenua (Aotearoa-specific) dimensions and methods for understanding place:
Whakapapa: the genealogy and layers of landscape and people
Hīkoi: walking and talking with landscape and people, experiencing and perceiving the land in all its entirety
Kōrero tuku iho: ancestral knowledge passed down through generations interconnected through time, place, and people — pūrākau (stories)
(Lister 72, 73)
In this model, each Aotearoa-specific dimension is also an active method for generating knowledge of place and reflective of an overlap between two western understandings. For example ‘hīkoi’ is a method for collecting physical information and for understanding how we perceive places.
The guidelines don’t dictate cultural expressions or physical patterns (eg: whare whakairo (carved meeting houses), rain gardens or glass atriums), although they do note we sometimes err by limiting tangata whenua values to the Associative dimension (Lister et al 73). Guidelines co-author Alan Titchener commented “I think the guidelines open the door for a more inclusive, reasoned way of dealing with landscape…and to process those thoughts in a way that other people can understand and follow” (NZILA).
When we correlate these landscape/whenua concepts of place with Whakaoriori Masterton’s Town Centre Strategy process (discussed in chapter 3), our town was considered almost exclusively according to a western ‘Landscape’ model, which misses part of who we are. Does this shine light on a fraught local preoccupation: the future of our earthquake prone Town Hall? Consciously or unconsciously, neither associative nor perceptual dimensions of the existing Masterton Town Hall or a potential new facility have been well acknowledged, in proportion to their well discussed physical aspects. When Robin White commented on this, suggesting for the CBD a town marae where everyone belonged, I shared with her a similar concept I’d come across: Te Whare Hononga The House That Binds, a gathering space sited with Taranaki Cathedral, already in its implementation stage. Robin replied “a highly appropriate addition to other projects in the region aimed at promoting concord.” Do whakapapa ways of seeing offer a way for our community to fill out the story?
How might bi-cultural methodologies take effect in Whakaoriori Masterton?
Among local governments, Masterton District Council is a leader in uplifting mana whenua perspectives through the establishment of a Māori ward and having representation from both local iwi at the council table, with committee voting rights. Sharing space and leadership positions together will over time grow a relational, cross-pollination culture.
Becoming familiar with conceptual kupu Māori (words) allows us to grow a greater understanding of the possibilities arising from uplifting te ao Māori in our processes. Not understanding can feel intimidating (to some), but the concepts bring us inside. They become empowering as ‘doing words’ — practical actions we can all take to lift our written down strategies or visions into life.
This can take many forms: exchanging maps at Council and kitchen tables; taking a new path to an old place by foot; heading out on hīkoi with a takeaway coffee to drop a pin and share a pūrakau (story) on social media. The more we tune in to this, the more we might see through whakapapa eyes our deeply local knowledge, our covert stories.
Whakapapa and local government, from principles to action
In Whakaoriori Masterton’s legislative framework (discussed in chapter 3), up the hierarchy but non-statutory, is ‘Urban Design Protocol’. What is this? How are these directives made, how are they adopted, and is this working out as intended?
“New Zealand is one of the most urbanised nations in the world — almost 87 percent of our population live in towns and cities. Yet we haven’t paid enough attention to making the places we live in successful places that work for people.” — NZ Urban Design Protocol
One last case-study — Urban Design Protocol and Te Aranga Design Principles
In 2005 the Ministry for the Environment launched the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol (NZUDP). Its Mission statement “calls for a significant step up in the quality of urban design in New Zealand and a change in the way we think about our towns and cities” (MfE). The Protocol describes attributes to improve the way we construct our towns and cities under ‘seven Cs’: Context, Character, Choice, Connections, Creativity, Custodianship and Collaboration. “Successful towns and cities are increasingly being recognised as vital to the health of our national economy. Success does not happen by chance but as a result of good planning based on a long term vision and coordinated implementation” (NZUDP 12).
To action the seven Cs, the Protocol asks local governments, private developers and landscape professionals across the motu to become signatories to the Protocol. The benefits of being a signatory are exclusive access to several things: a ‘Design Champions Network’’, meetings with ‘high level representatives’, a ‘package of resources’, and special urban design award categories. There was one mandatory action: “each signatory must appoint a Design Champion — someone influential at a senior level who can promote and champion urban design, and who can challenge existing approaches throughout the organisation.”
Masterton District Council is apparently a signatory. But who is our design champion, challenging existing approaches? This must have been a common refrain, because in response to the Protocol Ngā Aho, an Aotearoa network of Māori design professionals, formulated a ‘cultural landscape’ tool, Te Aranga Design Principles (the Principles). Ngā Aho stated that fundamentally, the term ‘urban design’ did not resonate with the connectedness of all whenua in a Māori worldview and argued that case studies continued to show that “mainstream urban design approaches and guidelines [ie NZUDP] are insufficient in ensuring enhanced built environment outcomes for Mana Whenua and Māori communities” (Te Aranga).
The intent of the Principles was to incorporate both Māori and Pākehā perspectives, connecting principles to both Māori culture (identity, wellbeing) and Pākehā culture (new methods for conservation, economic gain, unity). The unifying objective: “to enhance the protection, reinstatement, development and articulation of our cultural landscapes enabling all of us to connect to and deepen our ‘sense of place’”.
To create this Aotearoa-wide tool, seven foundational ‘process-oriented’ principles (Rangatiratanga, Kaitiakitanga, Manaakitanga: Wairuatanga, Kotahitanga, Whanaungatanga and Mātauranga) were synthesised to create ‘outcome-oriented’ principles: Mana, Whakapapa, Taiao, Mauri Tū, Mahi Toi, Tohu and Ahi Kā, each explained in terms of their practical application to landscape.
Local government adoption
In 2008 Auckland Council integrated Te Aranga Design Principles into its accessible-to-all Design Manual with graphic best-practice examples and living case studies. It reinforces the principles in applied terms — what we mean by this on the ground. “If the Unitary Plan is your rule book, think of the Design Manual as your how to guide” (About the ADM). They are situated online, alongside the Council’s Unitary Plan (equivalent to Wairarapa’s Combined District Plan). This is considered to have had real and positive effect on the ground.
As a designer I believe the connection of process-principles, outcome-principles and graphic visual explanations (ie: what we mean by that) is the trigger for effect. In Whakaoriori Masterton, applying local strategies or principles in practice is where we can get stuck. Seeing our principles in a graphic way might prompt the formation of a local spatial language, something professionals or anyone in the community can consult when designing, altering or maintaining any individual site in their local cultural landscape.
“Embedding mana whenua values into design offers up significant opportunities that benefit all”
— Auckland Design Manual
A mana whenua-specific development of Te Aranga Principles was initiated by two transformational Auckland CBD projects, Commercial Bay (a private development) and the Downtown Infrastructure Development Programme (public realm). This “resulted in new ways of thinking about design for the city centre, expressed in the phrase ‘Moving Auckland to Tāmaki Makaurau’”. An expert advisory panel including mana whenua was formed to advise, with this lens, on any project, prior to planning permission. How well have the Principles embedded since then? Most revealing were a pair of reviews of the Principles in 2018, a decade after their adoption by Auckland Council.
How effective?
LandsapeAustralia and Landscape Architecture Aotearoa asked practitioners how the Principles were impacting their practice. One landscape architect within Auckland Council said her understanding had evolved through hīkoi with mana whenua “then you realise it’s not just a tick list of things we’re trying to achieve, it is the fundamental philosophy of how you do things.” William Hatton (a member of Ngā Aho) stressed the important mahi (work) of the Principles with mana whenua capacity spread fairly thinly. “They provide a tool which Māori understand in terms of values and beliefs, therefore providing a platform for decision making representation at the table” (LandscapeAustralia).
Around the same time, Jacqueline Paul assessed Te Aranga’s effect through the Tāmaki Regeneration Company noting “setting the framework is one thing, applying and implementing it is another”. She saw that even though the principles were being integrated into design stages, there was a lack of integration to Council’s policies, and that aligning these carries potential for enhancement of the Principles in action. “This would be achievable by embedding [the Principles] into the procurement process…so that it is translated into the entire design process and formally implemented into contracts.”
Today, Te Aranga Design Principles are being adopted and adapted by other iwi and designers with their local governments, eg: Tauranga Moana Design Principles. (Tauranga City Council explains where this fits in their rather complex legislative framework on their Tauranga City website.)
What might we see?
In Whakaoriori Masterton’s urban centre, implementation of the mana whenua principles already articulated in our strategies is still embryonic, possibly because these values are scantly reflected in regulatory systems like our District Plan. Perhaps we can use Auckland Council’s Design Manual as a model. From this we may develop Whakaoriori Masterton-specific guidelines, protocols or patterns that embody our principles, and align our regulatory systems to them. Their effect over time might add up to form our future cultural landscape.
Adopting whakapapa-informed processes will give us new perspectives on the place we have today. What might we see that’s missing from the maps and visions we use to navigate, assess and build our town. Could this broad, multi-story perspective influence what we value about life here? How do we do this for tomorrow and for 250 years ahead?
How might a whakapapa-informed approach be applied in my place?
