Māori tribes record changes to lands and oceans, with some food-gathering practices that have sustained communities for hundreds of years lost
Danny Paruru crouches at the water’s edge, letting it wash over his hand. Behind him, at the far hill-line, the sharp peaks mark out where the lands of his tribe, Te Whakatōhea, once stretched to before they were forcibly taken by the crown. In front of him the surface of the estuary ripples.
“Years ago our kaumatua [elders] were realising that we were deemed to be landless people – that we didn’t have a lot of land left, after the lands were confiscated. So they turned their eyes to the ocean,” he says. “Places around this area provided our sustenance and our survival, over many generations of our people.”
