A History of the Settler-Colonial Freshwater Impure-Ment: Water Pollution and the Creation of Multiple Environmental Injustices Along the Waipaˉ River

Abstract

In this chapter, we outline the history of water pollution in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Waipā River and its tributaries and demonstrate how environmental injustices can accumulate slowly over time. We highlight how Indigenous (Māori) and non-Indigenous (Pākehā) peoples held fundamentally different understandings of what constituted contaminated or clean water based on their different ontologies and epistemologies. We highlight how Māori people and their tikanga (laws) and mātauranga (knowledge) were excluded from settler-state water management planning processes for the majority of the twentieth century. Since 1991 new legislation (Resource Management Act) allows for Māori to participate in decision-making, however Māori values and knowledge continues to be marginalised, and Māori concerns about water pollution remain unaddressed. Accordingly, in the Waipā River environmental injustice continues to accumulate.

Predictors of Land-Based Activity Participation in a National Representative Sample of Indigenous Individuals Living Off-Reserve

“…Neither individual nor family RSA was significantly associated with decreased frequency of cultural engagement. Although it is possible that recent efforts of reconciliation and reparative cultural engagement have mitigated the influence of these relationships, it is also plausible that ongoing experiences of colonialism-including ongoing land and water pollution [57,58], reserve systems and denial of Indigenous land rights or sovereignty [59], and inaccessibility of traditional knowledge-may continue to affect the frequency of landbased activities or such practices' influence in promoting health [60], regardless of history of RSA. For example, disruptions to intergenerational traditional knowledge sharing of culturally relevant food storage and preparation practices can increase exposure to biological contamination of food and depletion of resources from non-traditional hunting or fishing practices, which would ultimately reduce engagement in such activities [61].…”