Associate ProfessorNatalie Robertson

Te Riu o Waiapu — the home of my Ngāti Porou ancestors — is the heartland of my research. A motivating force in my research is recalling the legacies of my whakapapa, through story and image to “bind ancient genealogies with contemporary realities,” (after Linda Tuhiwai Smith, et. al 2016). A critical place-based enquiry, using whakapapa as a relational philosophy, system and practice, establishes my standpoint. My whakaahua lens-based practice is positioned as an expression of Mana Motuhake within a Matauranga Māori philosophical context. Waiapu Kōkā Hūhua is a place of many chiefly female leaders. Ngāti Porou leader Keri Kaa issued a wero: to both write and photograph from the vantage point of whakapapa connections to whenua. She challenged us to tell our own stories that emerge from Kaupapa Māori philosophies through Mātauranga-a-hapū.

Currently, I am leading AWA - which means river in te reo Māori – with Kaimahi Taiao restoration ecologist Graeme Atkins, to advance action for the Waiapu river from the mountains to the sea, through art. We share whakapapa/ genealogy to Te Whānau a Pōkai-Pōhatu and Tīkapa Marae, a hapū (sub-tribe) of Ngāti Porou. AWA can be deployed as an acronym for Artists for Waiapu Action. Through collaboration with other artists for each project, AWA creates visual media to serve as a witness to the changing landscape while also aiming at restoring and revitalising cultural and environmental relationships with the Waiapu. Our focus is on presenting and disseminating the research into the fishing techniques and methods of pā tauremu (stone fish weirs) to ‘restory’ our lifeways, linking creative practices with ecology.