Pouwhenua: Marking and storying the ancestral landscape

Abstract

This paper explores a series of contemporary strategies to restore and share our stories and knowledge of Te Tapuwae Tahi a Rangitāne-nui-a-Rangi (the single footprint of great Rangitāne of the heavens); the tribal territory once occupied and controlled by the descendants of the ancestor Rangitāne. Colonisation stifled our storytelling traditions, disrupting the Indigenous communications landscape by silencing Māori voices and removing the tangible markers of our authority, histories, relationships and connections. Yet, Māori have a long legacy of resisting erasure of our memories and authority derived from the tribal territory. This paper explores a series of contemporary strategies to restore and share our stories and knowledge of Te Tapuwae Tahi a Rangitāne-nui-a-Rangi (the single footprint of great Rangitāne of the heavens); the tribal territory once occupied and controlled by the descendants of the ancestor Rangitāne. As part of He Tātai Whenua, a project to develop a Māori landscape classification system, we explore contemporary practices of mapping and marking the tribal territory and systems for assembling our knowledge of the environment. We describe here contemporary physical expressions and associated rituals in the tribal area of the Rangitāne people (i.e., Wairau area and along the Manawatū River) of the tradition of pouwhenua (posts used to mark tribal authority over an area or resource). We argue that this practice is a form of Indigenous and ethical mapping that seeks to disrupt mapping traditions that colonise and silence Indigeneity. Māori therefore are building on old traditions for naming and visualising the cultural landscape to continue our storytelling traditions, decolonise the landscape and connect with the communication landscapes of our ancestors.