What happens if we can't mow the lawns? 

The grass can grow. 

Some preliminary findings and conclusions from my Master’s thesis research on decolonising mainstream placemaking practice in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

In a piece I wrote earlier this year I asked you all, as Landscape Architects, the same question I asked myself at the outset of the research; ‘koe wai hoki ahau?’ Who am I, who are we in the cultural landscapes of whānau, hapū and iwi? What does our mahi look like when we recognise and acknowledge the fundamental rights Māori have to determine their own lives and places. For me, these questions meant understanding (and often learning) our shared history, acknowledging my own bias, relinquishing control, coming out from behind the rules and learning how best to whakamana tāngata (value people) without appropriating. As I write this I cannot help but think of our current circumstances in isolation. Although this time may feel constrained by things we can no longer do and crowded by concerns of what we are going to do in the unforeseeable future, this time has also provided some of us with an opportunity to prioritise our whānau, communities and places- he waka eke noa, we’re all in this together.

The cartoon image tells a story of what it can feel like to engage with professional practice and to try and contribute to the formal decisions that get made about our places. What I learnt from our research is that you can have all the right people, with all the best intentions and ideas about a place, but if the communication is ineffective, we will continue to talk past one another and be stuck in what feels like an aroha triangle (Image 2). If there is to be true partnership, the one envisaged by Te Tiriti, manawhenua will no longer be collaborators or resistors in someone else's plan and this fragmented communication triangle will no longer exist. However, what the initial research indicates is that before partnership, comes restoration, and for this we need empathetic and effective communication. So how do we go about turning this triangle (communities/whānau, professionals, rules) into meaningful partnership? The following preliminary findings from the research could be read as an invitation for this kind of transformation. They are that we need to:

1. prioritise meaningful partnership with manawhenua. Approach manawhenua in reciprocity and ask what mainstream practice can do to be a better treaty partner (not just for the next project but in the long term). Be committed to listening and be in a position to transform accordingly.

2. avoid the instinct to define all things kaupapa Māori. Create systems, rules and be practitioners that can work with ambiguity and agile with your responses in order to learn from mistakes quickly.

3. systemically relinquish control over placemaking and whakamana other experts such as taitamariki (youth) and whānau. Turn design monologues into dialogues with others and recognise that good practice allows communities to be active agents in changing and shaping the process as well as the place.

4. observe, support and empower contemporary Māori place-makers and place-keepers. Ask networks such as Te Tau-a-Nuku, Ngā Aho and Papa Pounamu to collaborate in reimagining critical components of practice such as education and registration. Make room for difference and value contributions from manawhenua, kaimahi Māori, kaumatua, taitamariki and whānau.