Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic research with Māori women in northern Aotearoa (New Zealand) I use this paper to encourage reflection on how the loss and damages (L&D) discourse might better engage with Indigenous peoples’ lived realities of climate change. I argue L&D scholarship and policy-making is dominated by reductive economic, hazard-focussed, and fatalistic framings of climate impacts and adaptation that are largely misaligned with Indigenous (and specifically Māori) approaches to loss and damage. I illustrate recurrent themes in the research using the narratives of two Māori women who employ forms of cultural resurgence to revitalise health-giving relationships with the land and offset multiple losses, damages, and harms to health and wellbeing sustained through settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and climate change. The narratives re-frame loss, damage, and adaptation from the perspective of Māori women. They provide much-needed empirical evidence of intangible, non-economic, lived, and felt L&D, their socio-political (as opposed to simply biophysical) drivers, and the actions Indigenous women employ to transform vulnerability, adapt to change, and secure intergenerational wellbeing in line with their view of the world. Together, the narratives underscore the vital importance of engaging social context when conceptualising and responding to L&D, support the move towards Indigenous-led, decolonised adaptation, and reaffirm the important role of Indigenous women in responding to climate change and leading social transformation.
Introduction
You become strong in this kind of place. The wairua is your inner spirit. Your tinana is your body. The wairua and your tinana together. E kaha, e kaha (strong, strong). Your land, your wairua, your spirit. As a tangata (person), inside of you, it all encompasses in one. Staying on your whenua (land) makes you become much stronger. It makes you become a unity. In this valley, I call this paradise living.
You’re living here, and it's healthy for you. It's…uh, your wellbeing – it strengthens you. It helps you overcome things.
These words were spoken by a kuia (elder Māori woman) during my doctoral research into health, wellbeing, and climate change adaptation amongst Indigenous Māori women in the north of Aotearoa New Zealand. I open with this quote because it illustrates Māori perspectives on health and wellbeing and the enduring importance of relationships with the land for maintaining and revitalising health despite challenges such as climate change. As opposed to Western biomedical models of health and wellbeing that largely focus on the presence or absence of bodily disease or psychological disorders within individual persons, Māori conceptions of health and wellbeing are holistic, collective, and relational (Bell et al., 2017; Kearns et al., 2006; Mathews and Izquierdo, 2009; Rua et al., 2017; Smith and Reid, 2018; Vass et al., 2011). Although Māori whānau (families), hapū (sub-tribes), and iwi (tribes) may have differing lived experiences of health and wellbeing, in general, Māori understand health (hauora) and wellbeing (oranga) as a state of balance that is negotiated through relationships between individual persons, the wider socio-cultural landscape, environmental, and metaphysical domains (Durie, 1994; Harmsworth and Awatere, 2013; Henare, 1988). In this paper, I explore climate change impacts and adaptation through the lens of Māori relational wellbeing and the words, stories, and actions of Māori women, both of which have been largely obscured through existing modes of understanding and responding to climate change, including the loss and damages discourse.
Loss and damages (L&D) is a complex, contested, and evolving area of research and policy-making that seeks to understand the impacts of climate change on society and avert or minimise associated harms (Huq et al., 2013; Thomas et al., 2020; Vanhala et al., 2021). International deliberations on L&D emerged around the question of if and how less economically developed nations should be compensated for costs arising from climate change, especially those emerging beyond the limits of adaptation (Mechler et al., 2020). As a result, L&D have traditionally been conceptualised and managed using reductive economic and hazard-centric framings that seek to identify and respond to the monetary value of impacts attributable to climate hazards like sea level rise (McNamara and Jackson, 2019).
These reductive framings are incommensurate with Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences of the least tangible, non-economic impacts of climate change (including to relational wellbeing) (Tschakert et al., 2019). They largely overlook socio-political dynamics driving Indigenous vulnerability to L&D, and preclude consideration of strategies Indigenous peoples may employ to address L&D on their own terms (Galway et al., 2022; Sawatzky et al., 2020). Few studies explore L&D to Indigenous peoples’ relational, collective health and wellbeing, little is known of how contextual factors (including settler colonialism) influence vulnerability to these types of L&D, and very limited research examines concrete actions Indigenous peoples (especially Indigenous women) take to transform vulnerability and ameliorate health-related L&D (Johnson et al., 2021a; Whyte, 2016).
In this paper I present ethnographic research with Māori women that bridges these gaps in scholarship and encourages reflection on how the L&D discourse may better engage Indigenous peoples’ realities as they experience and respond to loss and damage. I illustrate recurrent themes in the research using the narratives of two women whom employ locally-distinctive forms of cultural resurgence to revitalise the relationships at the core of Māori health and wellbeing and offset multiple and mutually-reinforcing loss, damages, and harms sustained through settler colonialism, neoliberal political systems, and climate change. The research re-frames loss, damage, and adaptation from the perspective of Māori women and in so doing expands knowledge of L&D outside of its current limitations, with benefits for Indigenous peoples more broadly.
The narratives provide tangible examples of non-economic, lived, and felt L&D to relational health and wellbeing and highlight the intimate connections between existing deficits in Māori health and wellbeing and climate-related L&D, thus moving beyond normative hazard-centric framings (Jones et al., 2014; Roberts and Pelling, 2018). Moreover, by exploring the strategies Indigenous women use to address the root social drivers of vulnerability, the narratives demonstrate that L&D are not necessarily beyond adaptation (Mechler et al., 2020), challenge popular notions of Indigenous (and female) climate victimhood (Arora-Jonsson, 2011; Haalboom and Natcher, 2012), and underline Indigenous women's agency and expertise (McGregor, 2012; Stein et al., 2018). Together, the narratives underscore the vital importance of engaging social context when conceptualising and responding to L&D, whilst reaffirming the important contribution Indigenous women make to climate adaptation and supporting the broader move towards Indigenous-led, decolonised adaptation (Howitt, 2020; Johnson et al., 2021b; McNamara and Jackson, 2019).
The research discussed in this paper results from a multi-year collaboration between the first author (a white British woman), an Indigenous-led multi-stakeholder collective (the now reconfigured 1 Integrated Kaipara Harbour Management Group [IKHMG]), and Māori communities in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland). Whilst the paper is a combined product of all authors, it is purposefully written from a first-person perspective to convey the ethnographic encounters upon which the narratives are based. I do not seek to speak for Indigenous women. I merely wish to stand with Indigenous scholars’ efforts to disrupt ways of knowing and acting that marginalise Indigenous realities and support their work to recentre Indigenous peoples’ (and Indigenous women's) diverse lived experiences both within Te Tai Tokerau and further afield (De Leeuw and Hunt, 2018; Frandy and Cederström, 2017; Maher, 2018; Makey et al., 2022; Sarna-Wojcicki et al., 2019; Suaalii-Sauni and Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014).
Below, I review relevant literature on Māori health and wellbeing, L&D, and cultural resurgence and discuss the research context and methodologies. I then provide the results through the two narratives and use the discussion and conclusions to explore the merits of expanding L&D scholarship and policymaking from its current state.
Māori health and wellbeing
Like other Indigenous groups throughout the Americas, Pacific, Africa, and Europe, Māori hauora/oranga (health and wellbeing) arises from within a relational ontology whereby the individual exists as part of a network of human and more-than-human kin, joined by reciprocal relationships of care that sustain the whole system (Beamer et al., 2021; Mila, 2013; Presley, 2022; Rountree and Smith, 2016; Tynan, 2021; Ward et al., 2021; Wilson, 2003; Wilson et al., 2021). The concept of whakapapa (genealogical inter-relatedness) is integral in this regard (Forster, 2019a).
Whakapapa generally connotes cosmologically-derived kinship connections between the spiritual, natural, and human world based upon common descent (Forster, 2019a; Marsden, 2003). In Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) humans are descended from atua (gods): Papatūānuku (Mother Earth), Ranginui (Sky Father), and their children (whose essence animates ecosystems including the forest and sea, and natural phenomena, and landmarks like the wind and mountains) (Forster, 2019b). Tūpuna (human and more-than-human ancestors) are the progenitors of present-day iwi and hapū, and inhabited or came from particular places and environments now recognised as and encompassed within the tribal homelands (rohe) of different iwi and hapū throughout Aotearoa (Te Rito, 2007). Individual whānau members are thus enmeshed within a nature or place-centric genealogical collective. The self is inextricably linked to deities and other spiritual beings, the elements, landscapes, plant and animal species, ancestors, biological, and extended family members, and has responsibilities to care for all within this collective, including future generations (Harmsworth and Awatere, 2013).
Māori scholars position hauora/oranga as a dynamic state flowing through relations within the collective. Individual persons are considered well when the spiritual (wairua), family or social (whānau), emotional/mental (hinengaro), and physical/bodily (tinana) dimensions of hauora/oranga are equally nourished (Durie, 1994, 2004; Mark and Lyons, 2010; Murray, 2010; Pere, 1984; Pīhama et al., 2015). Relationships with tribal whenua (land) or tūrangawaewae (place of belonging or residence through whakapapa) are key to this process (Boulton et al., 2022; Rua et al., 2017) and in turn elevate the wellbeing of the wider collective. Gathering and sharing kai (food) and rongoā (medicine), offering karakia (prayer), visiting the marae (meeting house), relative's homes, wāhi tapu (sacred places), and urupā (cemetery), and participating in work parties (to maintain the marae or enhance the whenua) feed, strengthen, and heal the body, but also build familial bonds, cultural, genealogical, spiritual, and environmental knowledge (Maxwell et al., 2018; Panelli and Tipa, 2007, 2009). These activities enhance an individual's sense of belonging within the human and more-than-human whānau, whilst (re)affirming their associated obligations to nurture their kin and equipping them with the skills to do so (Ratima et al., 2015). Thus, as individuals are enveloped within these relationships on the whenua, they are sustained spiritually, emotionally, socially, culturally, and physically. In turn, they sustain relatives’ hauora/oranga (for example, through caring for elders, environmental restoration, sharing knowledge with children) therefore contributing to collective wellbeing both now and into the future (Moewaka Barnes et al., 2018; Te Ngaruru, 2008; Yates et al., 2022).
Loss and damages
The economic frameworks commonly employed to conceptualise loss and damages (L&D) are adept at measuring economic L&D (to things that can be traded in markets or have a market value, like infrastructure or businesses) yet have prevented full consideration of intangible or non-economic loss and damages (NELD) (Preston, 2017). NELD affect things not traded in markets such as ecosystem services; cultural heritage, values, and identity; human life, health, and wellbeing which emerge from context-specific social, cultural, epistemic, and ontological relationships between people, places, and the non-human constituents of reality (Morrissey and Oliver-Smith, 2013; Thomas and Benjamin, 2020). Economic frameworks are premised on standardisation, and transfer power to technical experts who determine, rank, and value climate impacts in an abstract context that cannot capture the specificities nor complexities of NELD (Tschakert et al., 2019). This precipitates several problems.
Firstly (despite a growing evidence base from within social science) NELD that are most challenging to conceptualise through economic metrics (for example, pertaining to Indigenous wellbeing, identity, and sense of belonging) are under-studied (McNamara et al., 2021) and can be misconstrued (Mcshane, 2017). Yates et al. (2022) note, for instance, that Indigenous (specifically Māori) wellbeing cannot be understood through westernised economic indices alone (like GDP) which fail to capture health-giving relationships with place and the non-human. Accurately conceiving of L&D to Indigenous relational wellbeing is made all the more difficult because the impact of climate change on health is typically framed in an un-reflexive, detached manner based on Euro-American concepts of individual bodily and psychological health as opposed to collective and relational approaches (Johnson et al., 2021a). The focus on economic responses to L&D in combination with incomplete understandings of NELD limits opportunities for exploring effective strategies to reduce harm, especially in culturally and ontologically-diverse settings like settler colonies. Decontextualised economic frameworks also compound the problem of attribution.
Fifty years of social vulnerability scholarship amply demonstrates that susceptibility to harm from climate and natural hazards is a combined product of ecological/climatic stressors and context-specific historical, political, socio-economic and cultural factors (Adger, 2006; Cameron, 2012; Cutter, 1996; Liverman, 1999; O’Keefe et al., 1976). However, because L&D are traditionally conceptualised and interpreted outside of their socio-political context and policy-makers have focussed on attributing L&D to climate hazards alone these insights have remained largely absent within the L&D discourse (McNamara and Jackson, 2019; Tschakert et al., 2019). Scholars critique the simplistic causal logic implied in hazard-centric and scientific framings of L&D (Roberts and Pelling, 2018; Wrathall et al., 2015) which is especially inappropriate in settler colonial and ex-colonial contexts where ongoing injustices and inequalities intensify L&D (Barnett et al., 2016; Pill, 2021). Despite growing support for targeted and ‘transformational’ policy that aims to ameliorate the root causes or social drivers of L&D (Addison et al., 2022) there is scant agreement about what this constitutes in practice. It is also unclear whether policies will disrupt institutionalised power imbalances to the extent necessary to ensure transformation of social drivers (Roberts and Pelling, 2020).
Inattention to the social drivers of L&D is amplified by the focus on ‘adaptation limits’ (Mechler and Schinko, 2016). Many L&D are seen as inevitable or unavoidable (Calliari et al., 2020) since they are locked in by historical emissions or because societies lack the solutions to adapt (Mechler et al., 2020). These narratives are deeply disempowering. They forestall consideration of insights communities may hold about how to offset L&D and strategies they may already be employing to reduce their vulnerability. Scholars advocate for more qualitative, participant-centred research to diversify and situate discussions on L&D in their historical, socio-economic, political, and cultural context (Barnett et al., 2016; Serdeczny et al., 2018; Tschakert et al., 2019). This enables more complete understandings of NELD and their social drivers, which can be used – alongside participatory planning and decision-making – to advocate for context-appropriate adaptive responses (Roberts and Pelling, 2018, 2020; Whyte, 2016).
Cultural resurgence
Cultural resurgence is a ‘decolonising praxis’ (Corntassel, 2012: 89) that seeks to regenerate and revitalise Indigenous ways of being and knowing in order to achieve self-determination and promote intergenerational wellbeing. As opposed to the ‘politics of recognition’ (Coulthard, 2014) whereby Indigenous self-determination is manifest within settler colonial political and legal structures (including land settlements or rights), cultural resurgence is the pursuit of self-determination on Indigenous peoples’ terms (Corntassel and Bryce, 2012; Daigle, 2016). Cultural resurgence entails political strategies that subvert the multiple cultural and material harms and losses precipitated through settler colonialism (Alfred, 2005; Corntassel and Bryce, 2012) by actively recovering and re-engaging context-specific relationships between Indigenous peoples, their homelands, communities, cultural, linguistic and spiritual traditions, and food, resource management, governance and legal systems (Alfred and Corntassel, 2005; Bowie, 2021). These are grassroots assertions of Indigenous identity and freedom that are inherently forward-looking, re-making Indigenous worlds to ensure sustenance and wellbeing of both current and future generations (Corntassel, 2012; Simpson, 2017).
Re-invigorating relationships with lands, waters or tribal/Indigenous territories is a crucial element of cultural resurgence (Corntassel and Hardbarger, 2019; Daigle, 2016). As Simpson (2017: 151–167) notes, everyday embodied actions on the land (hunting, gathering, restoring food systems, visiting sacred sites and so on) are a form of pedagogy. These actions expose individuals to Indigenous philosophies, traditions, histories, knowledges, and practices that are premised upon relationality and responsibility to interdependent human and more-than-human kin networks and form the core of Indigenous personhood. Mentorship relationships amongst family members (particularly between elders and youth) are key avenues for learning (Alfred and Corntassel, 2005; Corntassel and Bryce, 2012) that affect a profound form of healing and transformation at the individual level which reverberates through communities, tribes, and nations.
Through land-based learning and praxis, Indigenous bodies become microscale resistances to colonial domination and dispossession (Simpson, 2017) as they re-occupy traditional territories, re-assert their responsibilities, recover, re-affirm and transmit their unique identities and lifeways (Corntassel, 2012; Corntassel and Hardbarger, 2019; LaDuke, 2005; McGregor, 2013). The reassertion of relationality (to the land, human, and more-than-human kin) through cultural resurgence is integral to the pursuit of healthy, decolonised Indigenous futures (Nightingale and Richmond, 2022). Overlapping significantly with Indigenous health promotion literature and practice (Fernandez et al., 2021; Hond et al., 2019; Johnson-Jennings et al., 2020; Lavallee and Poole, 2010), cultural resurgence movements re-invigorate health-giving relationships between Indigenous peoples, lands, kin networks and cultures, strengthening the spiritual, emotional, and physical wellbeing of current generations who perpetuate relational renewal and restoration forward in time. Indigenous women play a significant role in cultural resurgence movements (Cidro et al., 2021; Nelson, 2019; Robinson and Toney, 2021; Toulouse, 2017; Wabie, 2019; Wane, 2018). Enacting their traditional roles as wisdom keepers, healers, and leaders, Indigenous women 2 simultaneously re-forge relationships between people, place, and culture, and rework deeply damaging (hetero)patriarchal gender relations largely introduced through settler colonialism (Cunningham and Desbiens, 2022; de Finney, 2014; Ramirez, 2004; Wuttunee et al., 2019).
In Aotearoa, the language and political nuances of cultural resurgence differ from the North American context where cultural resurgence emerged and is primarily theorised (Hoskins and Bell, 2021; Sharples, 1985). Reflecting Māori experiences with British colonisation, and distinctive Māori values, practices, and ways of life, the core tenets of cultural resurgence are embodied in the Māori cultural renaissance (Tahana, 2022), related discussions of revitalisation and revival of Māori relationships with land, Māori language, knowledge systems, and artforms (Whakaata Māori, 2022) and the over-arching concept of tino rangatiratanga (Hampton, 2020). Although Māori sought to protect their cultural identity and actively resist the state since British colonisation of Aotearoa began (in the late 1700s) it was not until the 1970s that these tendencies were mainstreamed through the cultural renaissance movement (Ballara, 1993; Keenan, 2012). As Tahana notes (2022), the movement was sparked by the Māori language petition, which called for official recognition and teaching of te reo Māori (Māori language) in schools, after generations of Māori children were persecuted and punished for speaking te reo rather than English in school.
From the language petition, the cultural renaissance spiralled to include: the occupation of lands for the purpose of recognising Māori land rights (Hayden, 2018; Ponika-Rangi, 2015; Smith, 2001); further discussions of language revitalisation resulting in the establishment of bilingual classrooms (Hill, 2017), kohanga reo (early childhood centres where the Māori language is exclusively spoken and Māori protocols followed) (Mita, 2007; Skerrett and Ritchie, 2021; Tangaere, 2006), and full immersion Māori language schools (kura kaupapa) for primary- and high school-age children (Tocker, 2015) between the 1980s and 1990s; the creation of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975, which investigates and makes recommendations to address grievances lodged by Māori in relation to laws, actions, and processes instituted by the Crown (New Zealand government) that violated the protections and rights accorded to Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document, and provides a venue for iwi, hapū, and whānau to share oral history, whakapapa, and mātauranga (knowledge) (Hayward, 2012; Miles, 1999; Tauriki et al., 2012; Waitangi Tribunal, 2023); and the establishment of pan-tribal urban marae (Davies et al., 2022; Haami, 2018) which enabled urban Māori to find solidarity and participate in the reproduction of their cultural identity through practicing tikanga (customs), and activities including speaking te reo Māori and learning mau rākau (Māori martial arts).
More recently, discussions have focussed on the revival of tā moko (traditional tatoo) as a form of healing and re-connection with whakapapa and identity (Whakaata Māori, 2022); the revitalisation (and resurgence) of mātauranga related to the Māori lunar calendar (both in terms of tribal stories and legends and its practical application in education, self-care, and tribal land management) (Andelane, 2020; Matamua, 2017); and the reassertion of responsibilities to whānau, the land, and wider intergenerational collective through the creation of iwi land management plans, marae food gardens, papakāinga (communal living arrangements), environmental restoration and monitoring projects in both urban and rural locations (Hond et al., 2019; King et al., 2015; Kingi et al., 2017; Million, 2020; Rua et al., 2017; Stein et al., 2018; Walker, 2019).
This diverse array of practices centre around the pursuit of tino rangatiratanga, the Māori concept of self-determination or sovereignty (Broughton and McBreen, 2015; Durie, 1998). It is beyond the scope of this article to comment in detail upon the nuances and local specificities of tino rangatiratanga, however, broadly speaking, practices associated with the renaissance, revitalisation of Māori ways of life, and reassertion of Māori rights and relationships with the land fundamentally seek to de-centre the power of the settler colonial state over Māori bodies, communities, expression, and lands 3 , and promote the ability of Māori to create the futures that Māori desire (Broughton and McBreen, 2015). This includes embracing, reconnecting with, and practicing core aspects of Māori identity and lifeways that have come under attack through settler colonialism, including the ability to maintain authority over Māori lands and communities, and to re-establish relationships and responsibilities that are fundamental to collective, relational health and wellbeing (Boulton et al., 2022; Hampton, 2020; Moewaka Barnes et al., 2018).
Methodology
Research context
This paper is based upon nine months of immersive ethnographic research with Māori women and their whānau (families) in and near to the Kaipara moana (harbour) catchment of Te Tai Tokerau (Northland) in the northwest of Aotearoa. Figure 1 shows the research area. The Kaipara catchment is the land area draining into Kaipara moana and, like its surrounds, comprises a varied landscape of native bush (forest), riverine, and coastal ecosystems interspersed with small townships, dairy, beef, and sheep farming, horticultural and silvicultural operations (kūmara/sweet potato, kiwifruit, avocado, pine forestry) (Makey, 2010). Māori have a significant and long-standing presence in the region (Stats NZ, 2018a, 2018b; Waitangi Tribunal, 1992, 2002, 2012) and are steadily working to elevate hauora of their people, lands, and waters, and achieve self-determination in the wake of settler colonialism (Environs Holdings Ltd, 2011; Te Roroa, 2021; Toki, 2019).
Map of research area.
The Kaipara and its surrounds became a focal point of the colonial Kauri timber industry in the early 1800s (Ryburn, 1997). Whilst the timber and later the Kauri gum industry led to some material benefits for local Māori through employment and trade (Pickmere, 2004; Wright, 1969), settler colonialism effectively ruptured the relationships at the core of Māori health and wellbeing (Wirihana and Smith, 2019). In combination with population decline from introduced diseases and warfare, colonisation eroded the social, cultural, spiritual, and material basis of wellbeing for Māori throughout Aotearoa through suppression of te reo Māori (language); traditional gender roles; spirituality; healing and cultural practices; and widespread loss of access to and control over whenua through legal mechanisms enabling the Crown (settler government) to confiscate and sell land to newly arrived settlers (Reid et al., 2014; Simon et al., 2001; Thom and Grimes, 2022). In the study area Te Roroa iwi, Te Uri o Hau hapū, and Ngāpuhi iwi were left virtually landless through confiscations, settlement, and colonial industry (including forestry and farming) and suffered great losses through cultural assimilation and the expropriation of mahinga kai (food gathering areas), wāhi tapu and other culturally important areas (Te Uri o Hau and Her Majesty the Queen, 2000; Waitangi Tribunal, 1992, 2012).
Land loss triggered widespread urbanisation of Māori during the post-war period which further broke apart extended whānau support networks, isolated individuals from their tūrangawaewae, land-based whakapapa and sense of belonging, and saw many whānau living in sub-standard housing whilst working poorly-paid manual jobs (Mikaere, 2011; Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor, 2019; Wilson et al., 2019). Approximately 80% of Aotearoa's Māori population still live in urban areas like Auckland (Haami, 2018), including many members of Ngāpuhi, Te Uri o Hau, and Te Roroa. Depopulation of rural marae and hapū-based communities such as those in and near to the Kaipara presents significant challenges for maintaining tikanga and kawa (protocol), local mātauranga (knowledge), and fulfilling important roles at the marae, within local politics, and as kaitiaki (guardians/stewards) of the whenua. From the 1970s onward neoliberal resource management practices (including intensive pine forestry, dairying, and horticulture in the north) further degraded the mauri (lifeforce/vitality) of land and waterways that began with colonial-capitalist resource extraction in the 1700 and 1800s (Kaipo, 1997; Mccarthy et al., 2014; Moewaka Barnes et al., 2018; Stevens and Wanhalla, 2017). Māori in both the Kaipara and further afield were (and still are) denied power in decision-making pertaining to their traditional territories, undermining their responsibilities as kaitiaki to care for the whenua (Parsons et al., 2019; Taiepa et al., 1997).
Today, despite the existence of a Māori elite class, many whānau in both urban and rural spaces (including the Kaipara and surrounds) experience high rates of deprivation and complex forms of racial, class-based, and gendered marginalisation that perpetuate poor health and wellbeing (Houkamau and Sibley, 2014; Johnston and Pihama, 2019; Meijl, 2020; Smale, n.d.; Stats NZ, 2021). Like other Indigenous populations (McKinley et al., 2020; Sherwood, 2013; Young et al., 2020), Māori have shorter life expectancy than non-Indigenous residents of Aotearoa, experience disproportionately high rates of physical and mental health complaints and associated traumas (including suicide, substance, and interpersonal abuse) and are over-represented in the justice and state care system (Hamley and Grice, 2021; Ministry of Health, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). These disparities are often conceptualised as the embodiment of grief, loss, and intergenerational or historical trauma associated with colonisation (Brave Heart et al., 2011; Getz, 2018). As theorists of Indigenous trauma have articulated, the actions of the colonial, neoliberal state have fractured, on multiple fronts, the holistic, interconnected ‘web of life’ integral to Indigenous wellbeing (Goeman, 2017; Million, 2013). State-sanctioned policing, control, and violation of Indigenous peoples’ bodies, linguistic, cultural, and spiritual expression in combination with the decimation of Indigenous territories for colonial-capitalist gain has eroded relational wellbeing and left a deep imprint on many Indigenous communities, which continues to be echoed down the generations and is manifest in a complex array of physical and mental-emotional health disparities (including feelings of disconnect from the collective, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, abuse and substance misuse) (Million, 2013; Wirihana and Smith, 2019).
Like other iwi, hapū, and whānau throughout Aotearoa, Māori in Te Tai Tokerau are reworking ongoing losses associated with colonisation and restoring the spiritual, social, cultural, and material bases of wellbeing. The practices of revitalisation, reconnection, and cultural resurgence described in section 2.3 are integral to these efforts. Within Te Ao Māori there is a rich heritage of female leadership and the generative power of Māori women as the progenitors of whakapapa and humanity was traditionally revered (Jahnke, 2000; Yates-Smith, 2019). Wāhine (women) play an integral role in many of the aforementioned Māori cultural revitalisation and resurgence movements, whilst also pursuing resurgent strategies of their own that explicitly seek to decolonise Māori gender relations and perceptions of women (Simmonds, 2019a).
Mana wahine is a conceptual framework that allows the user to explore, critique, and challenge the intersecting oppressions Māori women experience through settler colonialism (Irwin, 1992; Jahnke, 2019; Pihama, 2020). Wāhine Māori (Māori women) have always had diverse lived experiences (Te Awekotuku, 2019) but it is generally accepted that colonisation eroded the mana (prestige, power, authority) of wāhine as Victorian (hetero)patriarchal values were imposed onto Māori society through missionisation and schooling, and urbanisation led to the rise of the nuclear (rather than extended tribal) family, with Māori men increasingly fulfilling the role of ‘head of household’ (Mikaere, 2011). Settler colonialism situates wāhine Māori within complex power asymmetries that include not only race but gender, and which are intersected and potentially magnified by other forms of disadvantage (including but not limited to those based on class, sexuality, ability, access to te reo and tikanga Māori) (Johnston and Pihama, 2019; McBreen, 2019).
Drawing on mana wahine theory, Māori women have forged their own paths of resistance to (and resurgence from) settler colonialism, re-engaging their mana through diverse practices including leadership of iwi, hapū, and marae organisations, political activism, teaching, scholarship, sharing tribal history, artistic practices, and recovery of traditional birthing and menstruation practices (Murphy, 2019; Simmonds, 2019b; Smith, 2019). In the research site, wāhine Māori are at the forefront of many resurgent practices that reconnect whānau with the fundamental tenets of wellbeing. For instance, wāhine provide traditional forms of healthcare (like rongoā and mirimiri/massage) to whānau on a professional and informal basis; mentor youth in marae tikanga; facilitate access to te reo Māori, waiata (songs) containing genealogical information, and oral history; and create opportunities for local and urban whānau members to return to their tūrangawaewae, meet their relatives, and practice kaitiakitanga through employment within the (eco)tourist industry and ecological restoration projects. The actions of wāhine Māori in the field site echo wider scholarship that demonstrates Indigenous women play a central part in furthering self-determination, healing intergenerational trauma, and enhancing intergenerational wellbeing in their communities (Goeman, 2017; Million, 2013).
With climate change, the research area is projected to become one of the hottest and most drought-prone regions of Aotearoa (Mullan et al., 2016). Modelling shows that annual temperatures could rise between 1.4–3.1°C depending on the emissions scenario, the risk of extreme fire danger increases by 40–50% annually, and streamflow will decline (Pearce et al., 2016). Both marine and terrestrial biodiversity will likely be impacted by increased pests and diseases, habitat change, and declining ocean pH (Gazeau et al., 2013; Kriticos et al., 2013). Coastal and low-lying lands are likely to experience more frequent flooding and possible inundation as extreme rainfall events increase and sea levels rise by 0.5–1.4 m (or more) by 2120 (Ministry for the Environment, 2017; Pearce et al., 2016). These changes will exacerbate existing losses and introduce new forms of NELD to Māori communities in the region, but as this paper illustrates, Māori are actively addressing the impacts of climate change on their own terms. In addition to the individual and whānau-level actions discussed below, some iwi have integrated climate adaptation into their (environmental) management plans whilst others are involved with local government's adaptation planning efforts (Te Kārearea, 2021; Te Roroa, 2021).
Research design
Data was gathered between 2019–2020 using collaborative, culturally-sensitive mixed-methods ethnographic research (O’Reilly, 2005) comprising semi-structured and unstructured interviews, participant observation, and reflective journaling. Having received a marae and/or iwi-level invitation to engage in research in each case, I lived in three communities who supported the research for a period of between two to five months. Residing in the communities enabled me to learn as I participated in everyday life, impromptu conversation, and community events (the premise of participant observation (Malinowski, 1922)). These everyday interactions also fostered face-to-face relationships that were integral to building rapport, trust, and whanaungatanga (connection through shared experience) with potential research participants, ultimately leading to more robust data. I interviewed a total of 43 people, of whom 36 identify as wāhine Māori. Wāhine affiliate to Te Roroa iwi, Te Uri o Hau hapū (sub-tribe of Ngāti Whātua iwi), and Ngā hapū o Mangakāhia (sub-tribes of Ngāpuhi iwi). Interviewees were selected using snowball sampling (where research participants recruit others) and theoretical sampling, where individuals are chosen based on their ability to help the researcher build emergent theories (Bernard, 2011). Daily reflection in my field journal allowed me to identify emergent research themes, which I subsequently used to refine the enquiry, identify relevant interviewees, or request additional interviews with existing participants.
My positionality as a non-Māori, British, white, middle-class woman has required careful consideration throughout the research journey. As Indigenous scholars make clear both in Aotearoa and further afield, research is a power-laden endeavour with the potential to reinforce or challenge the power asymmetries inherent to settler colonialism (Kovach, 2009; Rigney, 1999; Smith, 2012). Research carried out in Indigenous contexts but led by non-Indigenous settler or Euro-American researchers been implicated in a range of harms against Indigenous communities (Deloria, 1988; Mosby, 2013; Porsanger, 2004) and has frequently marginalised Indigenous ways of being and knowing in favour of Euro-American intellectual traditions and methods of enquiry (Crazy Bull, 1997; Ten Fingers, 2005). Despite its aim to understand the world from the research participants’ point of view (Malinowski, 1922), ethnography has a contentious legacy of supporting colonisation and has been deeply critiqued for romanticising Indigenous societies and prioritising the ‘authorial voice’ of the (often white, male, European) ethnographer (Conklin, 2013; Deloria, 1988; Marcus and Fischer, 1986).
During the course of research design, fieldwork, and data analysis, I leant on the above critiques, combining these with discussions of best practice for navigating research encounters where participants and researchers have very different experiences of the world (Cram, 1997; Geertz, 1973; Howitt and Stevens, 2010). Reflexivity is integral to my research approach and has allowed me to negotiate many of the complexities involved in working in an Indigenous context as a non-Indigenous person. As Sultana (2007: 376) observes, ‘reflexivity in research involves reflection on self, process and representation, and critically examining power relations and politics in the research process, and researcher accountability in data collection and interpretation’. Reflexivity entails awareness of the ways in which the researcher's ethnicity, race, nationality, class, gender, upbringing, and other subjectivities create power dynamics within research encounters and influence the direction and conclusions of the enquiry (Smith, 2012; Sultana, 2017) and can help non-Indigenous researchers craft valid, reliable accounts of Indigenous peoples’ lived realities (Ball and Janyst, 2008; Porter, 2004; Shaw et al., 2006).
At many points during the research, I became intensely aware that my academic training, middle class upbringing, and other forms of race- and ethnicity-based privilege meant that I experience the world in a very different way than the Māori women with whom I worked. Rather than becoming ‘paralysed’ (Tolich, 2002) by my difference, I sought to produce knowledge humbly, and with integrity, in the knowledge that all representations of communities or phenomena are ‘partial truths’ filtered through our own interpretations as researchers (Clifford, 1986; Geertz, 1973). I engaged an iterative, multi-stage style of data analysis that incorporated feedback on interpretations and early findings from research participants, triangulation of data against other sources of information (such as news media, grey literature, and public meetings), and reflection on my own bias in fieldnotes.
At the conclusion of the fieldwork, I applied a bespoke analytical framework to interview transcripts and fieldnotes. The bespoke framework combines insights from thematic and intersectional styles of data analysis (Guest et al., 2012; Rodriguez, 2017) and involves multiple readings of transcripts and fieldnotes to identify recurring themes in the data and the relationship between themes and research participants’ subjectivities (including intersections of Indigeneity, gender, age, whānau composition and so on). The two narratives discussed in this paper provide a particularly strong articulation of several major, recurrent themes in the data, including the interaction of climate hazards, colonisation, and neoliberalism, and the agency of wāhine Māori in the face of multiple, ongoing socio-environmental harms.
Results
Partway through my fieldwork, a kuia explained to me, the whenua is very, very strong, okay? I believe, if you look after the whenua, the whenua will look after you. The land has a lot to do with our health. If the land is sick, you’re gonna be sick. That's how I feel.
Table 1 (at the end of section 4) provides a sample of these NELD to hauora/oranga and the strategies women are using to respond and adapt. Below I present the narratives of two of these women, Marama and Pania, who are concerned that climate change precipitates challenges for maintaining the health-giving relationships they mediate between urban Māori youth and their tribal whenua. The two narratives provide insights into the lived, embodied, and felt experience of NELD that go far beyond normative economic, biophysical, and hazard-centric framings of L&D and challenge the fatalistic discourse that L&D exist beyond the limits of adaptation.
Examples of L&D to hauora/oranga experienced by wāhine Māori in Te Tai Tokerau and strategies they use to respond and adapt.
The narratives reframe NELD from the perspective of wāhine Māori and demonstrate how NELD emerge from within distinctive socio-cultural systems and understandings of health, and exist in a complex interplay with ongoing losses and damages to hauora/oranga sustained through settler colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. The narratives also show that Indigenous women are not simply the victims of climatic, social, and political change. In both cases, the wāhine draw on their unique positionality and skills to enable continuation of health-giving relations between youth and place into the future. Using creative praxis that draws on and pushes the boundaries of Māori women's role in society, these wāhine seek to re-affirm connection to tribal homelands and identity despite ecological shifts, and re-invigorate ancestrally important landscapes through reciprocal duties of care.
Marama
Sitting outside, behind the wharenui (meeting house), Marama and I savoured the last rays of sun that day. Amongst the rattling of the marae's corrugated iron roof, the wind deposited snatches of a mechanical whirr into our conversation. The orchards were busy with people tending to kiwifruit and avocadoes, readying them for harvest and eventual export. From our perch on the wooden bench, I gazed at the tree-clad summit of Whatitiri maunga (mountain), rising from amongst a sea of shade-cloth and ripening fruit. If you knew where to look, you could probably trace the course of Karukaru creek as it splashes and eddies down through the rock, past Nan's bathing spot, the watercress patches, and the kēwai (crayfish) pools, eventually issuing into the Wairua River and flowing out into Kaipara moana.
Marama is an oral historian. For many years, she has helped whānau both within and outside her tribal rohe to experience connection to their web of relations through place and story. As well as introducing visiting whānau to long-lost human relatives and bringing them to the marae and urupā, Marama journeys up and down sections of Karukaru creek with her younger relatives – mokopuna (grandchildren), nieces, and nephews. Together, they wade through the water, stopping at certain points which Marama knows to be repositories of tribal history and ancestral activity. These sites are densely storied places: fishing, gathering, and swimming spots used over successive generations; a rock where funerary rites were performed for an important rangatira (chief). In recounting the narratives of these places, Marama weaves her relatives into a network of whakapapa dating to the origin of her people within that land. As Marama observes of these hīkoi (journeys) along the creek: Oral traditions aren’t just a story to keep you entertained, it's also a teaching aid, it's also an indicator of the past. In retelling the oral histories, by retracing steps (along Karukaru) you can tell stories of those tūpuna that have been there before you. And basically it's like role-playing, you're telling it in such a way that they feel that they're experiencing it as well. If you can genealogically link yourself to the characters, surely that builds your identity even more so?
With climate change-induced drought conditions projected to intensify in coming decades, Marama is concerned that further lowered streamflow might impact the ability of rangatahi to grasp their connection to place. Like other research participants, Marama noted the preference amongst Māori for what she called “experiential learning.” She explained, “You can sit at home and talk about a particular place, but it's a place in another world for those that are listening. We're visual people, so we need to be able to see a picture of it. And the best way to see that picture is to be there.”
“How can I take them down the Karukaru if there's no more Karukaru?”
Working with urban rangatahi, Marama is all too familiar with the embodied consequences of intergenerational identity loss. As Marama explained, in Te Ao Māori, the more people I know I’m connected to, the more I feel I belong. If you’re denied that connection, then you lose….your very self. With no whakapapa, you don’t exist.
Like other research participants, Marama observed that loss of connection to whakapapa (through the compounding effects of settler colonialism) has resulted in imbalances to hauora/oranga amongst urban rangatahi. Imbalances commonly manifest as mental health difficulties, membership in gangs (often associated with violence and drug misuse), substance addictions, and in the worst-case scenario, suicide.
Despite her reservations about the potential effects of climate change on identity and wellbeing for urban (and local) youth, Marama maintains hope for the future. She stated, “We can handle climate change. We have to adapt.” Partly, Marama believes adaptation to drought conditions necessitates far more stringent water conservation measures to decrease the pressure on the local aquifer and safeguard the health of waterways like Karukaru. Marama talked me through her ideas for reducing and recycling water at her marae, and described her work with local (non-Māori) landowners and local government to encourage more sustainable relationships with freshwater (including limits on use and regulation of all bores). At the same time, however, Marama conceded that until there is a shift in the overarching neoliberal ideology driving intensive horticultural land use in the area, the risk to waterway health (and therefore identity) persists.
Amongst the multiple challenges to identity and belonging, Marama remains committed to her role as an oral historian, and will continue to journey Karukaru with her whānau for as long as possible. In tenaciously pursuing her mahi (work) into the future, Marama sees herself contributing to the revitalisation of traditional, pre-colonial roles for wāhine Māori as stewards of knowledge and intergenerational wellbeing. In her hapū, Marama observed that there are, many stories, oral traditions, of woman in high ranking. Many stories about the woman having that leading role (and) the woman teaching. It was the woman who would sing those oriori, you know, like a lullaby, but it has the history of that baby in it. And it's sung to that baby. And that's another way of telling the tradition, telling you your identity.
Pania
After a lifetime visiting home infrequently, Pania moved back onto her tribal whenua six years ago, and now lives in a small cabin perched on a ridge above the Tasman Sea. Outside, a small lawn and vegetable plot plays host to scrambling sweet peas, kamokamo, and various species of kūmara and greens. During a break in our interview, Pania pointed out the urupā far below, she explained: this is our family land; it's our ancestral home. Our papakāinga (ancestral home); our ūkaipō (home, source of sustenance). This place nurtured and sustained our ancestors and our genealogy for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The medicinal or healing power of visiting home is especially important for those experiencing the symptoms of disconnection from the collective. As Pania explained: We wash ourselves in that water (at the creek) when we've got worries. We wash them away. I've got a son that's just been up here this week. He's in trouble in Auckland – he's addicted to P (methamphetamine) – and that water's going to help him. And these plants have already helped him. He's 25, my son, and he's heavily got into all of this stuff. And he comes here, and we're just not even going to talk about all that stuff. We're just gonna help to him to heal as much as we can. We can't change his mind. He's 25. He'll do whatever he's going to do; we can just love him. But we lovingly are doing medicine all at the same time.
there was just a spark in him that I hadn't seen in so long. Just to see his amazement and that connectedness to the whenua….I knew it was going to be medicine for him. I was just watching that all rolling out. The observation of a person who's been disconnected, basically from their own selves through addiction, and then come here, and it was probably almost overwhelming, the amount of love.
Pania is gravely concerned that climate change-induced drought, wildfire, pests, and diseases could affect the availability and quality of freshwater, food, and rongoā species that currently facilitate connection with and healing through the collective. As Pania explained, historic over-fishing by settlers, and seizure and conversion of land to pine forest and agriculture has already destabilised the health-giving properties of the whenua, thus climate change adds another layer of complexity for those seeking healing and health at home. Furthermore, wildfire, lack of access to freshwater, and sea-level rise could signal “an end to our whakapapa on this land” if the whānau cannot safely remain living at home. There is no guarantee that plants, animals, and waters from elsewhere would induce spiritual and emotional healing in the same way as those from the whānau's ūkaipō. With her brow furrowed, Pania concluded: if the climate was impacted so drastically, we wouldn't even have any of those tools, or resources in our kete (basket) to share or to help our people, our young people.
Despite the potential for climate change to compound existing intergenerationally-mediated deficits in hauora/oranga for young urban Māori, Pania remains hopeful there are pathways to reduce the severity of future losses. One strategy is to encourage whānau to move back home and revitalise relationships that strengthen the whenua against the impacts of climate change. Pania explained that when recently-returned whānau members visit the marae, they will be exposed to values, teachings, karakia (prayer) and te reo Māori which all foster awareness of connectedness and responsibility towards the environment. This awareness is heightened by spending time on the land, developing what Pania calls “environmental literacy” through observation of species behaviour, weather, tides, and ecological change. Time on the whenua deepens feelings of responsibility to place and equips whānau members to act upon their duties as kaitiaki (guardians) that nourish the land as it in turn nourishes them. Pania stated: I actually totally believe that the whenua is calling us home. Calling us home, because it needs help. Like really, if our Mum was sick and needed to be looked after, would all the children run away? Not if she's been a good Mum to us. No, we try and come home and look after her.
Clearing the whenua of invasive species like wilding pines and possums, planting native trees, and restoring waterways are all manifestations of kaitiakitanga that Pania and her whānau are using to enhance the vitality of their rohe and increase its’ ability to withstand the impacts of climate change.
As we gazed out across the wide arc of ocean from her home, Pania told me about a waiata (song) she had composed. Reproduced in Figure 2, the waiata names the key landmarks and ancestors in the rohe and can be shared with whānau away from home to ignite a desire to return home to live. By facilitating emotional and spiritual connectivity with the human and more-than-human collective, the waiata re-establishes connections that have weakened through time and space and encourages whānau to play their part in nourishing the whenua such that it can continue to sustain occupation into the future, despite ongoing challenges including climate change.
Pania's waiata.
Discussion
Marama and Pania's narratives provide insight into how NELD to wellbeing are conceptualised and addressed within Te Ao Māori and specifically from the perspective of two Māori women in northern Aotearoa. I argue the narratives underline the shortcomings of normative, reductive framings of L&D, and encourage greater engagement with Indigenous (women's) lived experiences and agentive responses to NELD.
Re-framing loss and damage from the perspective of wāhine Māori
Increasingly, scholars argue that for L&D (and particularly NELD) to be portrayed accurately, they must be conceived as a product of local knowledge, values, and ways of being rather than through rigid, abstract, and reductive frameworks (Henrique et al., 2022; Mcshane, 2017; Mechler et al., 2020; Preston, 2017). By drawing attention to the lived, felt, and socially-situated experience of L&D to hauora/oranga the narratives re-conceptualise NELD from an Indigenous (wāhine Māori) perspective. Emphasising the dense interconnections between relational ontologies, colonisation, climate change, health and wellbeing, Marama and Pania's stories highlight the limitations of reductive framings of L&D and forge more grounded understandings of NELD that align with the socio-political and cultural specificities of Māori women's realities.
Firstly, the narratives provide much-needed empirical evidence of climate-induced L&D to relational health and wellbeing. While a few studies (primarily focussed on Native American, First Nations Canadian, and Alaska Native peoples) do explore the impact of climate change on health-giving interpersonal and more-than-human relationships, discussions of this nature are still largely absent in the L&D literature and under-developed in climate and health scholarship (Donatuto et al., 2019; Sawatzky et al., 2020; Tschakert et al., 2019). In both Marama and Pania's stories the physical alteration of the landscape with climate change undermines the embodied relationships between people, the whenua, and the wider collective. These fleshy, hands-on, in-person relationships are integral for maintaining the flow of hauora/oranga throughout the entire kin network, despite the losses already sustained through settler colonialism. For people (and particularly urban youth) relations with whenua are the conduit for experiencing belonging within the collective, for receiving physical, mental, and spiritual nourishment through coming to understand whakapapa and connecting to the health-giving energies of human, plant, animal, and spiritual kin. In turn, these relations enhance the health of the whenua as whānau enact their reciprocal duties of care towards the land as kaitiaki. Thus, drying creeks, dwindling kai and rongoā species, and a potential retreat from the land present a series of cascading L&D to the hauora/oranga of both people and place.
The decontextualised economic matrices and/or biomedical/psychological models of health typically employed to measure L&D will never be able to convey the deep, relational loss and damages Marama and Pania describe. Indeed, as Preston (2017) and McShane (2017) note, harm to relationships (interpersonal, cultural, and more-than-human) are not easily conveyed through quantitative, economic frameworks and are hence an under-explored element of NELD. Centring (Māori) relational ontology, the narratives provide evidence of relationship-based NELD and reinforce the vital importance of accounting for socio-cultural context in measuring and responding to L&D (Barnett et al., 2016). Indigenous communities are highly aware of the threats to wellbeing climate change presents, and until their diverse lived experiences are accurately reflected in accounts of L&D there is a risk that adaptation policies could do more harm than good. A failure to engage with Indigenous, relational understandings of health and wellbeing in environmental and climate policy-making has already resulted in deficits to physical, emotional, social, and spiritual wellbeing amongst several Indigenous groups (Monnereau and Abraham, 2013; Tabe, 2019; Thomas and Benjamin, 2020). To avoid further maladaptation – where policies increase rather than reduce climate vulnerability (Barnett and O’Neill, 2010; Schipper, 2020) – Indigenous ontologies, cosmologies, and voices must inform scholarship and action on L&D.
The narratives also challenge the simplistic causal logic implied in hazard-centric framings of L&D. As Whyte (2018) observes, many Indigenous communities already inhabit a post-apocalyptic world where settler colonialism has largely reconfigured traditional social relations, gender roles, governance and justice systems, language, spirituality, food and healing systems, and so on. Climate change simply exacerbates these losses and represents another challenge for Indigenous communities to respond and adapt to (Whyte, 2016, 2018). Likewise, climate-related L&D to hauora/oranga are highly emotive for Marama and Pania because they build upon a history of relational loss for Māori, which these women are intimately familiar with and actively working to redress.
Vulnerability to L&D for Marama and Pania's human and more-than-human kin emerges from within colonial-capitalist dynamics which have already deeply impacted health-giving relations amongst the collective. Negotiating feelings of disconnection, identity loss, and addictions, the urban youth Marama and Pania work with live the social, emotional, spiritual, and physical consequences of land alienation and subsequent displacement from mutually-nourishing kinship relations within tribal homelands. In addition to displacing many whānau from their rohe, settler colonialism continues to present challenges for those who seek to (re)connect with whenua and whakapapa. Ongoing settler occupation of lands within both Marama and Pania's tribal rohe has restricted access to health-giving landscapes (like Karukaru, which Marama notes is surrounded by private property) and reduced opportunities to enact caring responsibilities towards the whenua (through kaitiakitanga). Further, both Marama and Pania point out that unsustainable, extractive, and export-driven farming, horticultural, forestry, and fishing practices encouraged by successive settler governments have degraded the mauri (lifeforce/vitality) of places and resources they use to heal and reconnect whānau in need 4 .
Approached through the lens of existing relational loss, it is clear normative framings of L&D again fail to reflect the complex lived realities of Indigenous communities. Hazard-centric framings that attribute L&D solely to climate hazards cannot and do not convey the structural drivers or root causes of Indigenous climate vulnerability which are at the core of Marama and Pania's narratives and adaptive actions (explored momentarily). Demonstrating how existing pressures on hauora/oranga underlie climate-related L&D, the narratives provide a tangible example of contextual vulnerability that has been largely absent in the L&D literature despite being extensively explored elsewhere in climate scholarship (Cameron et al., 2021; Jones, 2019; Marino, 2015; Nursey-Bray and Palmer, 2018; Preston, 2017; Serdeczny et al., 2018; Wrathall et al., 2015). Identifying and addressing the social drivers of climate vulnerability is integral to successfully, sustainably, and equitably reducing and adapting to harm (Eriksen et al., 2020; Howitt et al., 2012; Roberts and Pelling, 2020) and it is imperative these insights become normalised within L&D discourse (Roberts and Pelling, 2018; Tschakert et al., 2019).
Adaptation, resurgence, and the agency of Indigenous women
In addition to helping re-conceptualise NELD, the narratives make a significant contribution to the study of L&D adaptation in Indigenous contexts. Amidst the overarching lack of focus on adaptation in L&D discourse (Thomas et al., 2020) very few studies document concrete actions Indigenous groups are taking to adapt to L&D (Sawatzky et al., 2020). Whilst scholars rightly acknowledge that Indigenous peoples must participate in and co-design adaptation to the L&D they experience (Barnett et al., 2016; Tschakert et al., 2019), there is currently limited awareness of how Indigenous peoples (and especially Indigenous women) already exert their agency and expertise to adapt to L&D in their communities and on their own terms. Marama and Pania's stories (and the other women's strategies shared in Table 1) provide insight into Indigenous- and female-led responses to NELD. By sharing oral histories on hīkoi and encouraging whānau home through waiata Marama and Pania enact holistic adaptations to NELD that draw on their lived realities as wāhine Māori and restore the lost relations driving climate vulnerability.
Marama and Pania's adaptive strategies re-animate relationality between people and place, targeting ongoing forms of erasure, violence, and marginalisation that have eroded collective wellbeing and therefore drive vulnerability to L&D. By (re)embedding youth in their whakapapa, (re)instilling belonging to a people and a place, and (re)invigorating reciprocal relations of care (towards the whenua and whānau), the wāhine directly address the root social drivers of climate vulnerability for urban youth and enhance collective wellbeing into the future. Their adaptive strategies embody the essence of cultural resurgence, working as they do to transmute the deleterious impacts of colonisation, restoring the social, political, cultural, familial, and metaphysical relations so integral to Indigenous wellbeing (Corntassel and Hardbarger, 2019; Simpson, 2017; Tynan, 2021).
A handful of studies frame Indigenous climate adaptation as a form of cultural resurgence (Irlbacher-Fox and MacNeill, 2020; Niheu, 2019; Thompson and Ban, 2021) whilst a wider literature base connects resurgence to Indigenous environmental management (Bowie, 2021; Nightingale and Richmond, 2022; von der Porten, Ota et al., 2019). Throughout this scholarship, relationships between people and the natural world are the conduit for (re)animating kinship networks and reciprocal responsibilities, rebuilding Indigenous self-determination, and strengthening the social, cultural, and political realities that will sustain generations to come (Nightingale and Richmond, 2022; von der Porten, Corntassel et al., 2019). Marama and Pania's adaptive strategies operate in much the same way.
As Table 2 lays out, Marama and Pania's responses to L&D enhance political and cultural self-determination, elevating collective hauora/oranga and therefore reducing vulnerability to L&D. Marama's hīkoi along Karukaru with her mokopuna, nieces, and nephews and Pania's encouragement for whānau to return and live at home represent a physical re-occupation of the land, a key feature of political self-determination and cultural resurgence (von der Porten, Corntassel et al., 2019; von der Porten, Ota et al., 2019). In turn, these re-occupations are the conduit to embodied knowledge sharing, learning, and healing. Mirroring the outcomes of other environment-focussed resurgence projects (Corntassel and Hardbarger, 2019; Irlbacher-Fox and MacNeill, 2020; Nightingale and Richmond, 2022), these embodied relations reinforce political self-determination, perpetuate cultural expression, and nourish relational wellbeing.
Adaptation strategies as forms of resurgence within Marama and Pania's narratives.
As youth visit key landmarks along Karukaru, Marama practices a locally-distinctive form of Māori cultural and knowledge expression (oral history) that elevates youth awareness of whakapapa and identity (a well-documented indicator of positive mental health outcomes and trauma recovery for Māori and other Indigenous youth (Kingi et al., 2017; Macdonald et al., 2015)). Amidst multiple challenges to building identity, belonging, and mental wellbeing (land loss, urbanisation, private property, and climate change) youth enhance their knowledge of whakapapa and oral history. This knowledge is a taonga (treasure) that strengthens youth living the city (and at home), and enables them to perpetuate cultural identity, connection to place, and wellbeing over time as they recount whakapapa to their descendants. Similarly, Pania's waiata at once re-affirms cultural praxis and relational ontology, encouraging whānau to enact their cosmologically-derived responsibilities of care. Re-creating community on the land, whānau support and are supported by their human family and cultural traditions, whilst reinvigorating customary management practices (kaitiakitanga through restoration). These practices elevate the health of the land and sea and enhance access to the material and cultural resources (kai, rongoā, environmental knowledge) needed to sustain future occupation and offer healing to those in need (such as urban youth), despite the cascading challenges of land loss and degradation, urban migration, and climate change.
These holistic strategies go far beyond the hazard-centric framing of L&D and disrupt the disempowering fatalism that pervades the L&D discourse (Calliari et al., 2020). L&D to Indigenous wellbeing (and many other aspects of Indigenous peoples’ lives) may be momentous (McNamara et al., 2021; Whyte, 2016), but they are not inevitable and do not always exist beyond the limits of adaptation. As the narratives demonstrate, Indigenous communities hold diverse subjectivities: they may be vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, yet they are not helpless victims (despite often being framed as such in climate reporting and the media (Belfer et al., 2017; Nakashima et al., 2012; Oelz et al., 2017)). Drawing on their lived experiences of change and marginalisation, values, knowledge, and aspirations, Indigenous peoples like Marama and Pania are already taking steps to remediate the compounding harms of colonisation and climate change (Leonard, 2021; Nursey-Bray and Palmer, 2018). As Nightingale and Richmond (2022: 1) write, ‘Indigenous peoples globally are creative and implementing diverse, hopeful strategies to reconnect with the land to restore wellness’.
In their focus on reconfiguring the relationships driving vulnerability, Marama and Pania's strategies echo the wider move towards decolonised climate adaptation, which centres Indigenous ways of being and draws on Indigenous leadership, expertise, and capacities to address the socio-political drivers of harm (Cajete, 2020; Johnson et al., 2021b; Whyte, 2017). For instance, the Canadian group Indigenous Climate Action is working to decolonise climate policy on many fronts, including through critique of L&D negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) and lobbying for Indigenous-led solutions that address the systemic drivers of L&D through restoring relationships with the land (Indigenous Climate Action, 2023). Whilst the concept of L&D is not yet adopted widely in Aotearoa, Māori delegations do attend COP (albeit with limited capacity for decision-making (International Science Council, 2021; Radio New Zealand, 2021a)), and Māori activists and scholars are beginning to emphasise the connections between climate change impacts to wellbeing, systemic inequities, and the need for holistic adaptation focussed on rights and restoration of relations (Awatere et al., 2021; Radio New Zealand, 2021b). For example, Te-Whānau-a-Apanui (an iwi from Eastern Aotearoa) provided an early articulation of these connections in 2010–2011 when the iwi was involved in protests and a legal challenge to deep-sea oil exploration in its rohe (Hayward, 2012; Radio New Zealand, 2011). Te-Whānau-a-Apanui challenged the New Zealand Government's decision to award a permit for oil exploration to a Brazilian oil company, claiming the award had violated Indigenous rights enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi and put both the environment and communities at risk (of oil spills and through driving climate change)(Greenpeace, 2012). The iwi drew on their role as kaitiaki, vehemently re-iterating their commitment to defending their ancestral lands and waters and ensuring intergenerational, collective wellbeing (Bond et al., 2023; Gable, 2022). This paper adds further weight to the importance of enabling decolonised, Indigenous-led responses to L&D by demonstrating that contextually-relevant, transformative solutions exist and are already being enacted on a grassroots scale. These solutions may appear different from typical top-down, infrastructural, or cost-benefit driven interventions favoured in mainstream responses to L&D (Nightingale et al., 2020; Roberts and Pelling, 2018) but in their difference lies their strength.
Finally, it is significant that Indigenous women are the protagonists in the narratives. As agents of intergenerational transformation Marama and Pania further the decolonisation of Māori gender relations whilst resisting and reworking intersecting racial, class-based, and patriarchal norms in the wider climate adaptation discourse (Dhillon, 2020; Sultana, 2021, 2022). Asserting their voices, creativity, skills, and mātauranga (knowledge), Marama and Pania embody mana wahine, reaffirming the authority, leadership, and generative power of wāhine Māori. This reconfiguration is significant in its own right, but it also has important implications for decolonising and therefore enhancing climate adaptation more generally (Johnson et al., 2021b).
Despite the growth of intersectional approaches for analysing climate vulnerability and adaption (Amorim-Maia et al., 2022; Djoudi et al., 2016) very little scholarship focusses on Indigenous women and their contributions to adaptation (Vinyeta et al., 2015; Whyte, 2014; Williams, 2018). Like Indigenous peoples, women have traditionally been portrayed as climate victims (or champions of sustainability) (Arora-Jonsson, 2011; Iniesta-Arandia et al., 2016). Whilst Indigenous women have declared their desire for climate justice and planetary, interspecies, and intergenerational wellbeing (Emery, n.d.; United Nations Climate Change Conference, 2021; World Conference of Indigenous Women, 2013), it is questionable whether their diverse positionalities and experiences are integrated into decision-making, especially at the international level. As Sultana (2021, 2022) states, international climate change decision-making is largely the domain of white (older), middle class men. Even amongst Indigenous communities, there is evidence that Indigenous men dominate and benefit from adaptation decision-making, sometimes leading to wellbeing deficits for Indigenous women (Cochrane, 2014; Davies et al., 2018; Dhillon, 2020).
The narratives in this paper clearly demonstrate that Indigenous women like Marama and Pania refuse victim narratives and occupy complex subjectivities that entail both climate vulnerability and the capacity to use their embodied, lived experiences to adapt and thrive (Bee, 2014; Gabriel et al., 2020; Sultana, 2011). Renewing relationality, their adaptive strategies forge a pathway towards collective sustenance and resurgent wellbeing despite ongoing L&D, and demonstrate the insights, wisdom, and strength that Indigenous women bring to climate adaptation in spite of the many challenges they continue to face (Dowsley et al., 2010; Löw, 2020).
Conclusions
As climate change intensifies (IPCC, 2022) NELD will no doubt proliferate amongst Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies. As I have argued throughout this paper, existing discourses on L&D have limited capacity to conceptualise the lived realities of NELD (especially amongst Indigenous peoples) and current mechanisms for responding to L&D are both inadequate for addressing NELD (based as they are on compensation or hazard-focussed infrastructural interventions) and under-developed (due to debate over whether L&D occur within or beyond the limits of adaptation). At this juncture, it is necessary to develop more nuanced methodologies for understanding NELD and to explore alternative pathways for mitigating harm, suffering, and vulnerability from the least-tangible forms of L&D (Barnett et al., 2016; Serdeczny et al., 2018). As the narratives above clearly demonstrate NELD arise within complex spatio-temporal, socio-cultural, and political relationships that shape both experiences and responses to NELD. The distinctive social context producing and shaping vulnerability to NELD must be accounted for to develop appropriate, sustainable, and equitable responses (Roberts and Pelling, 2018, 2020).
Community-based adaptation and participatory planning processes are one way to enhance the efficacy of climate adaptation (Dodman and Mitlin, 2013; McNamara and Buggy, 2017). But as the wāhine involved in this research affirm, Indigenous peoples are already acting to reduce and offset L&D through decentralised, everyday, creative, and embodied processes (Cajete, 2020; Sawatzky et al., 2020; Swinomish Nation, 2021; Walshe and Argumedo, 2016). Marama and Pania's kōrero (stories) disrupt the normative and largely non-Indigenous framings that govern conceptualisation and responses to L&D and climate adaptation more broadly (Sultana, 2022). They push back against notions of Indigenous and female victimhood (Enarson, 2012; Oelz et al., 2017) and indicate alternative pathways for addressing L&D outside the confines of compensation, hazards, technology, or the belief that loss is inevitable (Mechler and Schinko, 2016).
The women's pursuit of cultural resurgence through adaptation is very different to standardised modes for addressing L&D but is wholly appropriate. These resurgent forms of adaptation reflect particular lived experiences. They represent a unique, socially-embedded response to overcoming vulnerability and enhancing intergenerational sustenance in a way that is consistent with local realities and aspirations for the future. Marama and Pania's narratives re-affirm the generative potential of Indigenous women and their communities to adapt to change, to (re)create and form new versions of ‘the good life’ in spite of compounding, transhistorical loss and damages (Buchanan et al., 2016; McGregor et al., 2020; Whyte, 2014). Successfully meeting the challenge of L&D will require divesting power to and supporting Indigenous communities as they respond and adapt on their own terms and in their own unique yet transformative ways.
Highlights
This paper challenges the loss and damages discourse to engage more thoroughly with Indigenous peoples’ lived realities of climate change
Employing Māori women's narratives of climate impacts and adaptation I encourage a move beyond reductive framings of loss and damage
The narratives provide empirical evidence of non-economic loss/damages to Indigenous wellbeing and the socio-political factors exacerbating Indigenous vulnerability to loss/damage
Demonstrating how Māori women offset loss/damage vulnerability through cultural resurgence, the narratives reaffirm Indigenous women's contribution to transformative, decolonising adaptation
I argue that attending to local social context and experience is integral to supporting appropriate and equitable responses to loss/damage
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all the participants involved in the research project upon which this article draws.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Future Coasts Aotearoa, The University of Auckland, Royal Geographical Society (grant number C01X2107, Doctoral Scholarship, FSPA 01/19).
