Connecting Māori Youth and Landscape Architecture Students through Participatory Design

Abstract

As with many Indigenous cultures, the Māori connection to the land in Aotearoa New Zealand has been weakened by colonization, urbanization and other factors. In particular, Māori youth in their progressively technological world, experience a disconnection from their culture and their land (whenua). Using a participatory design method and designing with the land is proposed as a way to enable cultural reconnection through the reconstruction of identity. Developing ideas from community engagement and place-making with Indigenous groups, in this research landscape architecture students joined with Māori youth (rangatahi) attending an alternative education program to co-design a public community space. The article reflects on the benefits of the community-based participatory research methodology for both groups, including the development of an understanding of the importance of Indigenous knowledge and rebuilding connection to culture and land.

Keywords:

• community engagement
• Indigenous youth
• landscape architecture
• participatory design
• co-design

Notes

  1. Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

  2. Whenua, land, placenta or afterbirth.

  3. Bruno Marques, Jacqueline McIntosh, and William Hatton, “Haumanu Ipukarea, Ki Uta Ki Tai:(Re) Connecting to Landscape and Reviving the Sense of Belonging for Health and Wellbeing,” Cities & Health 2 (2018): 1–9.

  4. Russell Bishop et al., “Te Kotahitanga: Addressing Educational Disparities Facing Māori Students in New Zealand,” Teaching and Teacher Education 25, no. 5 (2009): 734–42.

  5. Pākehā, non-Māori.

  6. Mihi, mihimihi, speech of greeting.

  7. New Zealand Government, 2014, “Mihimihi,” Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori - Māori Language Commission, http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/maori-language/tikanga-maori/mihimihi-en-nz/.

  8. Te Reo Māori, the Indigenous language of Aotearoa New Zealand, the language of Māori.

  9. Brian Murton, “Embedded in Place: ‘Mirror Knowledge’ and ‘Simultaneous Landscapes’ among Māori,” in Landscape in Language: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. David M. Mark, et al. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2011).

10. Pito, umbilical cord.

11. Murton, ‘Embedded in Place’.

12. Tangata whenua, people of the land.

13. NZILA, “NZILA Landscape Charter,” https://nzila.co.nz/media/uploads/2017_01/nzila_draft_charter_final_for_2010_agm_as_at_24_march_2010.pdf.

14. Linda Clarkson, Vern Morrissette, and Gabriel Regallet, Our Responsibility to the Seventh Generation: Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development (Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development Winnipeg, 1992).

15. M’Lis Bartlett, Participatory Landscape Design with Urban Minority Teens: Building Collective Efficacy for Landscape Stewardship (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2015). R. Mullahey, Y. Susskind, and B. Checkoway, “Youth Participation in Community Planning,” in American Planning Association (Chicago, American Planning Association 1999).

Wessel Strydom and Karen Puren, “A Participatory Approach to Public Space Design as Informative for Place-Making,” Challenges of Modern Technology 4 (2013). Sharon Egretta Sutton and Susan P Kemp, “Children as Partners in Neighborhood Placemaking: Lessons from Intergenerational Design Charrettes,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 22, no. 1–2 (2002): 171–189.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Mullahey, Susskind, and Checkoway, “Youth Participation in Community Planning.”

20. Strydom and Puren, “A Participatory Approach to Public Space Design.”

21. Rangatahi, Maori youth.

22. Lynne C. Manzo and Douglas D. Perkins, “Finding Common Ground: The Importance of Place Attachment to Community Participation and Planning,” Journal of Planning Literature 20, no. 4 (2006): 335–350.

23. Elizabeth B-N Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers, “Co-Creation and the New Landscapes of Design,” Co-Design 4, no. 1 (2008): 5–18.

24. Elizabeth B-N Sanders, “From User-Centered to Participatory Design Approaches,” in Design and the Social Sciences (London: CRC Press, 2002).

25. Ibid.

26. Theodore Zamenopoulos and Katerina Alexiou, Co-Design as Collaborative Research, ed. K. Facer and K. Dunleavy, Connected Communities Foundation Series (Bristol: University of Bristol/AHRC Connected Communities Programme, 2018).

27. Marc Steen, “Co-Design as a Process of Joint Inquiry and Imagination,” Design Issues 29, no. 2 (2013): 16–28.

28. Sanders and Stappers, “Co-Creation and the New Landscapes of Design."

29. Sanders, “From User-Centered to Participatory Design Approaches.”

30. Jeremy Till. “The Negotiation of Hope,” Chap. 2, in Architecture and Participation, ed. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till (New York: Spon Press, 2005).

31. Bruno Marques, Jacqueline McIntosh, and Philippe Campays, “Participatory Design for Under-Represented Communities: A Collaborative Design-Led Research Approach for Place-Making,” in Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement and Social Change in Contemporary Society (Abingdon: IGI Global, 2018).

32. Ibid.

33. Charles H. Klein, Oscar Reyes, Jerome R. Koch, “A Service-Learning Project Involving Multiple Service Projects Including the Mentoring of Younger at-Risk Youth,” NACTA Journal; Twin Falls 51, no. 4 (2007): 55–61.

34. Ibid.

35. New Zealand Government, “Census Quickstats About a Place: Carterton,” Stats NZ (Statistics New Zealand, 2013).

36. Iwi, “extended kinship group, tribe, nation, people, nationality, race – often refers to a large group of people descended from a common ancestor and associated with a distinct territory” - Moorefield John C, 2019, “Te Aka Online Māori Dictionary,” https://maoridictionary.co.nz.

37. Mana whenua, iwi with authority over land or territory.

38. New Zealand Government, 2020, “Alternate Education,” Te Kete Ipurangi http://alternativeeducation.tki.org.nz/Alternative-education.

39. Mātauranga Māori, Māori knowledge or ways of knowing.

40. Kaitiaki, guardian.

41. Kaitiakitanga, guardianship.

42. Merata Kawharu, “Ancestral Landscapes and World Heritage from a Maori Viewpoint,” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 118, no. 4 (2009): 317–338.

43. Marques, McIntosh, and Campays, “Participatory Design for Under-Represented Communities.”

44. NZILA, “NZILA Landscape Charter.”

45. Marae, communal and sacred meeting place.

46. Kawa, traditions and protocol.

47. Pūrākau, story, stories.

48. Noho marae, an overnight stay on a marae.

49. Tikanga, how traditions and protocol are carried out, “correct procedure, custom, code … protocol” – Moorefield, “Te Aka Online Māori Dictionary,”

50. Wharenui, meeting house.

51. Pōwhiri, welcoming ceremony.

52. Kaupapa, “plan, purpose” – Moorefield, “Te Aka Online Māori Dictionary,”

53. Kai, a meal.

54. Karakia, prayer.

55. Patu, a traditional carved club.

56. Mau kakī, carved bone pendant.

57. Klein, Reyes, and Koch, “A Service-Learning Project Involving Multiple Service Projects.”

58. Linda Tuhiwai Smith has been called a Māori post-colonial theorist; however, she has rejected the term in “Decolonizing Methodologies” writing, “Naming the world as ‘post-colonial’ is, from indigenous perspectives, to name colonialism as finished business.” Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012).

59. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Researching in the Margins Issues for Māori Researchers a Discussion Paper,” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 2, no. 1 (September 2006): 4–27.

60. Fiona Cram, “Rangahau Mäori: tōna tika, tōna pono – The Validity and Integrity of Mäori Research,” in Research Ethics in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. M. Tolich (Auckland: Pearson Education, 2001).

61. Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Rodgers

Maria Rodgers is currently a PhD candidate and teaching fellow in the Landscape Architecture Programme at the Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington. She is particularly interested in participatory design, cultural landscapes, planting design and the use of plants by Indigenous people.

B. Marques

Bruno Marques is a Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Programme director Landscape Architecture at the Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington. His main research interests relate to the integration of Indigenous methods in participatory design and place-making in landscape rehabilitation and ecosystem services.

J. McIntosh

Jacqueline McIntosh is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington. Her current research projects revolve around investigating therapeutic and rehabilitative built environments. This multidisciplinary and multi-institutional bicultural research focusses on the design of the built environment for wellness including social and cultural inclusion.