Ecological homelands: towards a counter-ontopology of landscape design

Abstract

Geographer John Wylie critiques problematic claims of belonging to place that would suggest a natural connection between people and topos. Such ontopological beliefs in a homeland rely on environmental determinism or historicization to assert an inextricable link between blood and soil formed over centuries of human occupation and use. In this article we examine ways ontopology operates in the protected areas of Aotearoa New Zealand, which as places that are understood as 'wild' and thus outside of the presence of people, provide an intriguing contrast for considering ontopology and how it may be approached through design. Wylie identifies two counter-ontopological positions for landscape: one an orientation towards hospitality, welcome, and sanctuary; the other seeking to destabilise homeland thinking through unsettling, dislocating, and distancing such troubling claims of belonging to place. Drawing on these directions, we examine a landscape design project undertaken by Lincoln University's Landscope Designlab at Ararira Wetland in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, which reimagines protected areas by expanding ways people might engage with them through the design of counter-ontopological forms.

Pursuing Plurality: Exploring the Synergies and Challenges of Knowledge Co-production in Multifunctional Landscape Design

“…In Aotearoa NZ, akin to other settler colonies, land management is a contentious issue (Te et al, 2019;Ojong, 2020). In recent years there has been a recognition within the literature of the historically ongoing resistance by indigenous communities, the Māori, to colonial and industrial visions of landscape design and management (Marques et al, 2018;Abbott and Boyle, 2019). Māori communities and scholars have instead proposed landscape design and management rooted in their culturally derived worldview and knowledge system, mātauranga Māori, which foregrounds whakapapa, a genealogical web that connects humans to the non-human world (Harmsworth et al, 2016;Spiller et al, 2020).…”

“…While our work engages with recent scholarship on questioning Aotearoa NZ's colonial roots of landscape design (Abbott and Boyle, 2019;Marques et al, 2021) and trysts with multifunctionality (Pearson, 2020;Tran et al, 2020), it is deeply inspired by the powerful and ongoing mobilization the place-based cosmologies of the Māori people, the autochthonous/indigenous people of Aotearoa NZ (Lilley, 2018). Specifically, we work with the Mauriora Systems Framework (MSF) which is a processual framework emanating from Mātauranga Māori cosmology and Kaupapa Māori practice (Matunga et al, 2020).…”