Kia Whakanui te Whenua   - The ideal Christmas gift

Kia Whakanuia te Whenua - People Place Landscape was published by the Landscape Foundation in 2021 and by the end of the year it had been awarded the runner up prize in the Canterbury Heritage Week literary awards for non-fiction. This year the book was also judged a joint category award winner in the Research and Communications section at the Resene New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architecture Awards.

The writers were landscape practitioners and knowledge holders and included experts in biodiversity, language, culture and heritage. The majority of the writers whakapapa to Aotearoa although most other writers - from Australia, the USA and Ireland - were also Indigenous. The topics in the book are diverse and range from an initial discussion of the spirit of landscape through weaving together the strands of cultural knowledge, discussions of the legal issues affecting Maori with the final chapters focusing on the practical application of the philosophies covered in the book.

Kia Whakanuia te Whenua was designed to promote diverse landscape knowledge and our association with and relationship to our landscape.  

You can support the Landscape Foundation by giving this attractive book to colleagues, clients or family.

Purchase online at Landscape.org.nz  - Press the button ‘order.’   Cost of $53.50 including postage.

Kia Whakanuia te Whenua People Place Landscape was the outcome of an idea formulated by our Trustee, Sam Bourne who postulated that Aotearoa landuse practitioners need a research strategy aimed at identifying critical issues relating to the whenua: so where is research needed and how can it be accessible to everyone - not siloed away?

We held an industry workshop and the book was planned as a step towards Knowledge Hubs for regional research. There was a sense of urgency to take this first step so after sending out a general call for manuscripts, in June 2019 our chair Dr Diane Menzies wrote to more than 70 people inviting contributions to the book.  Diane was determined that the book would be Māori-led. By Māori-led, the inclusion of Māori writers was intended to reflect Māori concepts of land and the idea of partnership, and the book does that.

Our own editor Carolyn Hill read all manuscripts and assembled the contents into a logical progression from exploring Wairua O Te Whenua or the spirit of the land through Pou Herenga - a repository for knowledge - which provides a reference point  for making sure this spirituality is embedded in place through identity and naming. The chapter on Whenua Māori confronts the pain of alienation and whenua loss and how that can be transformed by looking at kaupapa Māori alternatives. Whakarerekē Tāone takes these issues and threads them into thinking about cities in this era of major change. The next chapter - Hikoi Horanuku walks us through the landscape and asks us to understand place – whakapapa/ hikoi/ ancestral knowledge and the critical importance of being on and knowing the land. Whare Pora weaves this all together  by looking at environmental management  and how we might weave mātuaranga Māori into western scientific solutions. The final chapter Whakahāngai puts it into practise exploring how this thinking informs and changes “on the ground” practise. This revealed some gaps in content which was urgently addressed by other helpful writers, and then rounded into the book. Carolyn word smithed each of the individual manuscripts so they link together in an integrated style.