Latest news with #Whakapapa
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Mount Ruapehu ski season officially opens this long weekend
Whakapapa ski field, Mt Ruapehu, 2023. Photo: Supplied/ Ruapehu Alpine Lifts Thousands of skiers, snowboarders and sightseers will head up Mount Ruapehu this long weekend, with both skifields now officially open. This will be Whakapapa's first season under new operator Whakapapa Holdings , and chief executive Travis Donoghue said 10,000 people were expected to take advantage of good weather and early snow. "For us, June is a bonus... particularly with Matariki weekend. Folks tend to start thinking of a winter way, so really start to come out in large numbers from today onwards." Meanwhile, Tūroa Ski Area was expecting more than 2000 visitors over the long weekend. Tūroa is also now being run by a new company, Pure Tūroa , after Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, which oversaw both skifields, went into insolvency in 2022. Both Whakapapapa Holdings and Pure Tūroa have been granted 10-year Department of Conservation (DOC) concession to run their respective skifields. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Nga Tohu Toi Awards
te ao Maori arts 10:07 am today Matariki is already off to a celebatory start there with the Nga Tohu Toi Awards held last night. The awards honour the exceptional contributions of Maori artists who whakapapa to Tauranga Moana.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Iwi files court action against minister and DOC over Ruapehu ski fields
Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone A central North Island iwi has filed court action against Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka and the Department of Conservation (DOC) over concession made to the commercial operators of Tūroa and Whakapapa ski fields on Ruapehu. The iwi, Te Patutokotoko, alleges the Crown failed their legal obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi by failing to engage with them and actively protect their interests in their ancestral maunga by continuing to deal with private owners over them. Lead claimant Te Kurataiaha Te Wanikau Tūroa told RNZ the the iwi has been looking for a solution to the issue for years, but was "shrugged off no matter what plan we put forward". Tūroa said the iwi had spoken directly to the minister about their concerns. "We actually put in an interest for Whakapapa 18 months back, we got right to the end of it... the Crown just shut us off at the 12th hour. "It was a let down. But we didn't cry. We just carried on. That's what we're doing," Tūroa said. Earlier this year, Whakapapa Holdings Limited and Pure Tūroa were granted 10-year concession by DOC to operate the north and south sides of the maunga respectively. The previous owner went into receivership in 2022 and the successful bid by the private companies came as a relief to Ruapehu mayor Weston Kirton who said the ski fields were vital to the district's economy. Te Kurataiaha Te Wanikau Tūroa said he did not want the companies to be kicked off the mountain, but wanted the iwi to have more say on how the maunga was operated. "It's an activity that our people, and New Zealanders, and foreigners come to do. It just needs to be run better. "We still have no coexistence with iwi our people in this, and that's where the breakdown is," Tūroa said. In a statement, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka said it would not be appropriate to comment as the matter was before the courts.
Otago Daily Times
13-06-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Good food is only right
Food is a human right, but beyond that, is the right to food sovereignty. Hagar Ozri talked to two wāhine Māori to find out what it can look like. Sovereignty is a word we need to contemplate — it means authority or autonomy — in a world where the opposite is the lived reality for the most vulnerable, as skyrocketing food prices make the availability of good food slip away. The right to food is the most basic human right. Food is more than a physical need, it is a cultural and spiritual need too, this complexity reflected in the term "food sovereignty". If we listen to the indigenous knowledge and conversations around the issues, would we have some healing and answers to the most pressing issues of our time? I draw inspiration from women leaders. Vandana Shiva, from India, is a fierce advocate for local farmers and the local economy. She fights against corporate take-over of local farms and calls sustainable agriculture "a gratitude agriculture", gratitude to Mother Earth, a non-violent sacred agriculture. New Zealand's Kay Baxter is doing amazing work at Koanga Institute, teaching permaculture and collecting heritage seed varieties. Their seed catalogue says: "We are the seeds of your ancestors, the seeds that have nourished you forever, the seeds that give you life, the seeds that you pass on down as your responsibility to the next generation". I am not Māori, but I find hope from the knowledge of tangata whenua because they link me to this whenua — this land in which I live. I interviewed two inspirational wāhine here in Ōtepoti — doing good work in the community through kai — helping whānau forging connections to the whenua — for social, mental and physical health and wellbeing. Sue Smith is a co-ordinator of a māra kai project, growing food for the Puketeraki Marae and whānau. Rongowai Papuni is a mental health practitioner who developed a programme for healing through working in the garden, learning to grow food. Both women incorporate Te Hua Parakore knowledge in their work — a decolonising indigenous farming framework, regaining knowledge of farming and growing home gardens based on these pillars: (From Jessica Hutchings' website • Whakapapa (genealogical connections); • Wairua (spirituality) • Mana (authority); • Māramatanga (enlightenment); • Te Ao Tūroa (the natural world); • Mauri (life-force) SUE SMITH Sue Smith was involved in permaculture in Sydney for a number of years and completed the certificate in permaculture design in New Zealand in 2021. "I am a member of the Kati Huirapa rūnaka based in Karitane. I spent a lot of time working in permaculture, just as a hobby, just as a fun thing to do ... you always want other people to connect with what you think is a good thing, but sometimes you just have to do it for yourself, and then things happen anyway, if you're open to sharing and conversing and communicating," she says. I started by asking her about food sovereignty. Q. What does food sovereignty mean to you? A. On the micro level, for me, is to have control over the food that I want to eat and knowing that I'm accessing high-quality nutritious kai, so growing my own at home and growing for whānau. On the macro level, what bothers me is that we're not in touch with our local growers. We don't really know where our food comes from, and the food itself, which is a basic human right, everyone should have access to good quality kai, has been commercialised and is in the hands of people that are only doing it for a profit. So, food shouldn't be a commodity, it's a basic human right ... So I suppose for me, food sovereignty means that you've got control over the food for you and your whānau, that you know you're giving them good quality kai that you can access easily, and access to culturally appropriate food that nourishes and doesn't poison you. Q. What is the work that you do at the māra kai in Karitāne? A. I am involved in a rūnaka-based project called Kete Kai Ora. This project is about getting fresh vegetables and wild venison to our whānau as a way of building connections to our whenua. Colonisation has led to our people being disconnected from our land and our traditional kai sources. Kete Kai Ora is some small way to fill that void. Kind of a contemporary mahika kai approach. We also have a once-a-month harvest where a few of us will go out there and gather as much as we can, get the meat, which is processed by a butcher, Matanaka Meats, and get that to the whānau by a navigator's role, who drives into town, because most of our kaumātua don't live at Karitāne, and drops food from their whenua to their homes. Our people know that it's good quality, nutritious vegetables and that the venison is good organic meat. The other aspect is seedlings — we've just built a seedling grow house. We're going to grow excess seedlings and share those with whānau so they can perhaps build that level of food security or sovereignty in their own backyards without having to spend a lot of money. We make a lot of our own compost, so hopefully we'll have our own seed-raising mix next year so we can ensure that our families are getting good quality seedlings. It is the process of building that level of self-sufficiency and resilience for our whānau who aren't able to come out to the whenua, actually accessing the whenua in a different way. Q. Do you bring other aspects of hua parakore into your work at the māra kai? A Well, yeah, at the moment we've been exploring the hua parakore framework as a whānau or as a small group. Essentially, that guides us how to interact with the soil and how you interact with the plants and the people. It's really about the food that's shared with people, the manaakitanga that sits with food and the mana that sits with being able to provide our people with good quality food if you're the grower or you're the cook. So there's a whole spiritual aspect to growing food that recognises the impact of the environment around you, right down to the microbial lifeforce that sits in the soil, and how that also sits back with the creation story of Hine-ahu-one and Papatūānuku and Tangaroa and Ranginui and all those elements that sit within the soil and the world around you and that goes into your food. So you're actually feeding your soul or your spirit with good high-quality food. I think there's a damaging effect on our psyche when we're eating rubbish. So, then that goes deep and that is, to me, the help that we really need, to bring in all that content and purpose. It is the deeper meaning behind claiming our right to food and sovereignty. RONGOWAI PAPUNI Q. What does food sovereignty mean to you? A. For Māori, food sovereignty, I think it is a massive topic, so it's hard to condense it into a couple of sentences ... It is reclamation, reclaiming whenua, reclaiming space, reclaiming identity, reclaiming processes and tikanga and the knowledge around kai, around mahinga kai, mahika kai. Those practices are all coming back now, which is great, but you can see there were a lot of generations where it was just lost. Q. How do you implement that in your work, in the mental health field? A. When I think about people we're working with, coming together for a purpose, like a māra kai rōpu, we're bringing people into the whare and we have a process, and the process wouldn't be just come and eat some food, it's come and be a part of growing this food. It's hard looking at "how do you take the skills that we're going to learn here in this space and then take them home", so we get the pen and paper out and get people to sketch out their whare, their house, and how much land they have and kind of start from there and look at what kind of things they would want to be eating so that they can grow those things. So, then that's empowerment and sovereignty, taking those kinds of skills home. We grow things also on site, and whatever was produced people can take home some kai. At the end of the growing season we would have kai. Q. So, it's not just the eating of natural food feeding the physical — also the mental, the spiritual, that is the process of decolonising and giving people mana? A. Yeah, absolutely. The connection. Yes, people would get really excited about it and people are humbled by receiving kai. And in terms of community, we'd have people coming from different ages, different stages of life, different iwi, different backgrounds, and some people would be isolated and then come into the space where they would get to have kōrero and waiata and karakia, and after that learn some gardening skills, and then actually go outside and put some of those skills into action. I think that comes alongside that, having skills, your own skills and knowing how to grow your own foods. It is mana enhancing, so you've got a new skill set from, you know, how do you start, use that, it's giving them connection to the whenua. We think about Papatūānuku and connection with atua. We think about Papatūānuku and Tamanuiterā, Ranginui, Tāwhirimātea, so we've got the wind factor. Tāne Mahuta, and te taiao also, our nature, our atua, are all there, so there's connection happening, not only with other people, but our environment too. Q. So when you work with mental health, what is your method? A. The programme that I developed is based over three months, one growing season. We had a bit of funding from Te Pūtahitanga (tēnā koutou — thank you to them) and from then I was, like, OK, what do we need? We need tools, we need soil, it was all from the ground up, and then I need to design a programme. OK, so what method are we going to use in the garden. And we didn't have a lot of space so I just thought we'd go with a crop rotation process. So, we had three garden beds and then we just brought in the soil, we got seeds for whatever we wanted to grow and then we planted the seeds and then we watched them grow over the period of three months and, in between that, we learned about soil quality, soil health, pest management, crop rotation and what that means and how you do it. The sessions would start with karakia, followed by a waiata, then a learning session, we learned about maramataka and then we'd look at what mahi we needed to do, what work needed doing in the maramataka. You have the skills now to take this back to your whānau. You got me thinking about Te Whare Tapa Whā when you talked about pillars and, yes, that's like taha whānau, taha tīnana, taha hinengaro and taha wairua so that's like your community or social spaces, the body, the mental space and the spiritual elements. Gardening, you can incorporate that into food sovereignty and food practices, as it's a health model that's utilised here. If you are well in your thinking, and you're well in your body, and you're well in your social spaces, they all link in and link up, so it just makes sense to me, if you're not feeling well, you need to go outside. And I think also, being Māori, māori means natural, to be natural. Tangata whenua means people of the land, and we don't live those ways any more. So, for me, everything in terms of healing just needs to go back to that ... but our environments today, social ways of being in the world are quite different to that, like, almost quite the opposite. So, it's just taking really small steps ... As small a thing as opening your door, going outside. Ginger, kumara and tofu pie This is inspired by the recipe for ginger crunch kumara cheesecake from Kai Feast, by Christall Lowe — this is a vegan version. Ingredients For the crust 250g (1 packet) gingernuts biscuits ¼ cup / 100g coconut oil For the filling 2 medium-sized kumara — to yield 2 cups, peeled, cooked and mashed — cooled 400g tofu — 1 block of soft natural tofu. I use the locally made tofu (can use silken, but do not use firm). 250g coconut cream 2 Tbsp tapioca flour (or cornflour) ¼-½ cup soft brown sugar (I like it not too sweet so I use ¼ cup) ¼ tsp salt 1 Tbsp orange zest 2 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice 2 tsp ground ginger Method To make the crust: • Oil a 22-24cm springform cake tin (line the bottom with baking paper). • Place a third of the biscuits in a food processor at a time and process to crumbs, place in a bowl. • Melt the coconut oil, add to the bowl and mix well into the biscuit crumbs. • Press the crumb mix on to the bottom of pie dish / cake tin. To make the filling • Add all ingredients into the food processor and blend well — start with the tofu and kumara then add the rest. • Place filling into prepared pie dish / tin. • Bake for 45 min at 180°C. • Drizzle with brown rice malt while hot. • Serve when completely cooled.
Scoop
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
PAPA: Woven Wearable Art Returns To Auckland For One Day Only
Press Release – Kahui St David's Free to the public, PAPA Papatnuku | Whakapapa brings the rich traditions of Mori weaving and cultural expression to life through fashion, music, and performance, transforming Khui St Davids into a vibrant runway. Auckland, New Zealand – In celebration of Matariki, PAPA – Papatūānuku | Whakapapa returns next month to Auckland with a one-day-only event that showcases the finest in woven wearable art. What: PAPA – Papatūānuku | Whakapapa – Woven Wearable Arts Showcase When: Saturday 7 June 2025 | 1:00pm–3:00pm Where: Kāhui St David's, 70 Khyber Pass Road, Grafton, Auckland Tickets: Free entry – registration essential via Eventfinda Website: Free to the public, PAPA – Papatūānuku | Whakapapa brings the rich traditions of Māori weaving and cultural expression to life through fashion, music, and performance, transforming Kāhui St David's into a vibrant runway. Curated by Te Whaea Witika and Beronia Scott, who are part of Te Puāwai Raranga, a collective of contemporary and traditional Māori artists and weavers based in Ōrākei, Auckland, the showcase will feature a collection of pieces from across New Zealand, woven from harakeke, natural fibres, and upcycled materials such as plastic bottle caps, tivaevae, and fast fashion waste. Some pieces take up to a year to complete. These works of wearable art will be modelled by participants of all ages, from rangatahi (youth) to kaumātua (elders). This year's featured artists hail from across Aotearoa and include: Beronia Scott, Te Hemoata Henare, Ann Margaret Strickland, Takutai Watts, Rawinia Weeva, Rosina Chan, Alan Chan, Jennifer Pountney, Tūī Stewart, Waimirirangi Howell, Lisa Pahau, Marama Morehu Batiyaka, Kiri Wikiriwhi and Danny Horsford. Event highlights include: Kiri Wikiriwhi's 2024 People's Choice Award-winning piece, woven from recycled white box strapping using the traditional mautahi weave. Rosina Chan's intricately designed pihepihe, featuring a dragon motif within a tāniko band – celebrating her whakapapa and mastery as a kairaranga. Te Whaea Witika, lead weaver, says: 'Now in its second year, PAPA – Papatūānuku | Whakapapa is more than a fashion event – it's a celebration of community, culture, and creativity. It showcases the artistry of Māori weaving alongside live performance, music, and wearable expression. 'Through the works of wearable art that will be walked down the red carpet at Kāhui St David's, we hope to inspire future generations to weave, to care for the environment, and to continue the practice of using natural materials.' In addition to the stunning woven artworks, attendees can enjoy live performances from Te Whare Karioi, Maraea Mokaraka, music by DJ Jeremy Robb, and delicious kai served by Te Whānau Toi Tupu – a collective of weavers raising funds for a cultural exchange trip to Thailand. 'We're also inviting rangatahi from the local community, with students from nearby high schools gaining hands-on experience in the creative arts and proudly stepping onto the red carpet,' says Te Whaea Witika. 'Audiences will be part of the celebration too, through the People's Choice Award – voting for their favourite piece and helping to recognise the incredible talent of our artists.' Paul Baragwanath, Director of the Friends of St David's Trust, concludes: 'Hosting PAPA is a true privilege. This is a space for everyone – where cultural expression, performance, and beauty meet. 'It's a thrill to see these woven works of art come to life on the red carpet of the Great Hall of Kāhui St David's. We are inviting people of all cultural backgrounds to come and celebrate Matariki, music and wearable art.'
