COS 183-4 - Once a tool of colonization, Infrastructure must now demonstrate the right to belong!

Abstract: The concept of infrastructure belonging, acknowledges that anthropogenic impacts are the most significant denigrator of ecosystem mauri (life supporting capacity) that the world has ever seen. It is quite possible that the granting of personhood to the Whanganui River in New Zealand, could have been taken as a huge insult by the river itself. That granting of personhood was however necessary to achieve sufficient status to afford essential protection of its remaining mauri.

The assumed hierarchy that places humankind above all else in ecosystems is not however a universal way of knowing. Indigenous Peoples rather understand their relationship to their ecosystems of origin as a reciprocity of thought, spoken words and actions. A pertinent example is that following birth, the whenua (placenta) is returned to the whenua (earth) and a seedling planted over it. As the tree grows so too does the child. The relationship created is a way of knowing on multiple levels. The tree is the elder to the child, has a significantly longer life span, and draws on both whenua for sustenance throughout its life. The shared whenua creates a bond, not just between that tree and the child, but also other trees in the forest that have likely been nourished by the whenua that nourished the child’s ancestors.

This way of knowing, expressing belonging through incantation and action, has not resonated in the provision of infrastructure historically. Infrastructure was often an imposition upon the landscape and the Indigenous Peoples of an area. A history of Infrastructure in Aotearoa New Zealand will be shared as seen through an Indigenous Lens with three phases identified that provide understanding of the need to give the Whanganui River personhood, and the underlying ways of knowing that made infrastructure projects the earliest grievance claims.

Four decades later, wide ranging reforms in policy and law mean that Indigenous ways of knowing must now be included in decision making about water, reframing the relationship with water, and places obligations on governance processes, to acknowledge ecological, social and cultural priorities much more strongly. The hierarchy for prioritisation is to protect the mauri first, the source of the water and its integrity. Municipal water supplies are a lesser obligation, followed by other consumptive uses such as power generation and irrigation. The mauri of water is a primary concern for all, as it ultimately determines the flourishing or otherwise of our future generations.