‘Thinking with Kaipara’: A decolonising methodological strategy to illuminate social heterogenous nature–culture relations in place

Abstract

Decolonising methodologies continue to be critically developed to disrupt the marginalising approaches to knowledge production. By privileging Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing, relations with nature are a more-than-human entanglement and a relational pursuit. Ecosystems such as estuaries and rivers are connected through kin-based relationships and treated as (or are) ancestors and family members. Such embodiment connects the body–mind–spirit to maintain relations with the mauri of ancestral beings and Deities. Within this ontology, nature is indistinguishable from culture. Our research responds to the call of how method might proceed to de-centre the human and make bodily and material encounters with the nonhuman matter. ‘Thinking with Kaipara’ is a methodological strategy that is a deliberate attempt to pursue embodied ways of producing knowledge. To work with situated knowledges, place and social difference to address the crisis of representation of such in ecosystem-based management, the problematising of ecosystem degradation and restoration practices. Research data produced is founded on human and nonhuman collaboration, an ethic of care, diverse epistemic nature–culture relations, social/nature/gender justice and equality, which makes for empirical evidence not enjoyed by scientific and technocratic methods utilised to inform and shape ecosystem-based management decisions and policy. Geo-creative practices are used by co-researchers/co-participants to recount their lived experiences and knowledges of ecosystem degradation and restoration. Storytelling, poetics, and painting, sculpting, whaikorero, waiata and writing were practices used. We argue that such geo-creative practices challenge the normative spaces and practices of disciplinary knowledge-making and enable the examination of social heterogeneous nature–culture relations in settler-colonial societies.

Broadening environmental governance ontologies to enhance ecosystem-based management in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Our research is grounded in governance innovations occurring in Aotearoa NZ that have been at least partly shaped by the political resurgence among Māori, and the growing influence of Te Ao Māori (Māori ontology) and mātauranga in shaping governance and institutional arrangements (Harmsworth et al 2016;Makey and Awatere 2018;Parsons et al 2021a). Along with DePuy et al (2021), Joseph et al (2021), Makey (2021) and others, we argue the need for governance researchers to give greater attention to the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of governance theories and practices to avoid the (inadvertent) perpetuation of social and environmental injustices and epistemological and ontological violence arising from ongoing processes of colonisation. We see potential in aligning EBM and relational ontologies since relational approaches 'offer a productive way of questioning and deconstructing prevailing ideas around nature and culture' (Döring et al 2021: 225) and relational ontologies emphasise connections and relationships as the key to thriving social and ecological systems (Foggin et al 2021).…”

“…The 'relational turn' in the social sciences and sustainability sciences re-focuses attention on how 'nature' is produced, enacted, or performed through interactions and interconnections that entangle human and more-than-human/ nonhuman actors (Makey 2021;West et al 2020). In contrast to a modernist or 'substantialist' paradigm, which assumes dualisms between humans and nature based on essentialist thinking that supposes the existence of foundational substances constituting objects, entities, and things, relational thinking is argued to better 'captur[e] the complexity of human-nature connectedness' (West et al 2020: 305).…”

“…While there has been attention given to improving the operationalisation of EBM including creating governance arrangements to support EBM (Alexander and Haward 2019;Leslie et al 2015;Stephenson et al 2019), there has been less attention given to how governance approaches are conceptualised, constituted, and enacted -the ontological dimensions of governance -and how this shapes power relations and dynamics among different (human and non-human) actors (DePuy et al 2021;Foggin et al 2021;Makey 2021;Makey et al 2021;Ntona and Schröder 2020). Researchers such as DePuy et al (2021), Ntona and Schröder (2020), Makey (2021), and Brennan (2022) show how much of the research focused on environmental governance, including for EBM, conceptualises 'governance' within a western, 'modernist' ontology that actively shapes the world in particular ways (DePuy et al 2021;Foggin et al 2021). A modernist ontology is informed by enlightenment thinking and characterised by a separation of nature from culture, a hierarchical conceptualisation of cultural difference, and a linear (teleological) understanding of time (Blaser 2009(Blaser , 2014Chandler and Reid 2018).…”

“…Modernist governance arrangements, therefore, tend to simplify the natural world and the myriad socionatural relationships that exist in relation to places, to conceive of participation, rights, and property in constrained terms and rely on prescriptive or technocractic solutions to address environmental problems (DePuy et al 2021;Makey et al 2021). Increasingly, researchers challenge the ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning modernist governance theories, models, and practice, particularly in the context of colonisation and the ongoing deleterious effects on Indigenous peoples (Chandler and Reid 2018;Howitt and Suchet-Pearson 2006;Makey 2021;Muller et al 2019;Ntona and Schröder 2020;Tiakiwai et al 2017).…”

“…In this paper, we draw on this emerging research to identify conditions to enable and enhance governance for EBM that can accommodate both Indigenous and non-Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies, practices, and aspirations (Makey 2021;Makey et al 2021;Reid and Rout 2020;Tiakiwai et al 2017). Our research is grounded in governance innovations occurring in Aotearoa NZ that have been at least partly shaped by the political resurgence among Māori, and the growing influence of Te Ao Māori (Māori ontology) and mātauranga in shaping governance and institutional arrangements (Harmsworth et al 2016;Makey and Awatere 2018;Parsons et al 2021a).…”