The Water Project Seminar, March, 2017
At COCA, the Centre of Contemporary Art in Christchurch, presentations were made by 10 speakers, each with a unique story to tell of their particular association with water. Scroll down to see videos of these presentations.
Videos of seminar presentations
Filming by FRAMEBOY PRODUCTIONS
A NGĀI TAHU PERSPECTIVE
Te Marino Lenihan, Ngāi Tūāhuriri
I am a Tangata Tiaki (Customary Fisheries Guardian) for my Hapū, and have represented North Canterbury Ngāi Tahu on a number of public and tribal forums over the past decade that focus specifically on water and customary fisheries management, including, The Regional Committee for the Canterbury Water Management Strategy, and the Mahinga Kai hī ika Customary Fisheries Management Committee for Ngāi Tahu.
27min
I AM WATER
Teoti Jardine, Kāi Tahu
My marae is Arowhenua. I’m an Iwi representative on The Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board and the Takatatiaki for The Avon-Ōtākaro Network. I’m a poet and a short story writer.
It would hearten me to hear the voices of concern speaking from the water’s point of view.
10min
TOWARDS A NEW LANGUAGE
Charlotte Šunde
Social scientist at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson. Charlotte’s research focuses on a cross-cultural ecology of understanding for environmental practice.
How do we move beyond dualistic relationships with nature to more profound and holistic cosmotheandric interrelationships? The dominant political and economic discourse around ‘natural resource’ use, extraction and allocation frames managerial relationships with rivers in terms that are alienating. A counterpoint may be found in the Whanganui River iwi expression, ‘Ko au te awa, Ko te awa ko au’ (I am the river, the river is me) and the recent Treaty of Waitangi settlement that grants Te Awa Tupua (the Whanganui River) with the rights of a ‘legal person’. What might this mean for other rivers in New Zealand?
12min
Note: Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill had its Third Reading in Parliament on 14 March 2017, and was passed into law.
Reference:
The Development Dictionary – A guide to knowledge as power, Wolfgang Sachs (courtesy ShifterMagazine.com)
VERY SUDDENLY AND AT GREAT SPEED
Eric Pawson
Professor of Geography at the University of Canterbury and author of a range of essays and books on economic and environmental history. Eric raises questions about how we might reclaim a more responsible relationship with water.
Recent papers include: Landscapes of the ʻAnthropocene: from dominion to dependence?’ in Rethinking Invasion Ecologies for the Environmental Humanities, and ʻWhat Sort of Geographical Education for the Anthropocene?’
15min
NATURAL PURIFICATION
Graham Fenwick
Graham is an ecologist and crustacean taxonomist with 30 years’ research and consulting experience on the biodiversity of shallow coastal and groundwater ecosystems. Graham explains how invertebrate biodiversity is a key component in the natural cleansing of alluvial aquifer groundwaters. He laments that while human impacts on these ecosystems are poorly understood, a new approach to managing Canterbury’s huge groundwater resources is urgently needed.
20min
Credits
Cruregens fontanus is an isopod crustacean that appears to be a predator that grows to 20 mm long. Photo by NC Boustead, NIWA.
Phretogammarus fragilis is an amphipod crustacean, and a powerful swimmer. Adults, such as this female with a brood pouch full of embryos on its underside, can reach 25 mm long. Photo by NC Boustead, NIWA.
THE NATURE OF THE PLACE
Di Lucas, Landscape architect
Di works in community-friendly planning and design processes for creative and sustainable solutions. She works on a range of projects that vary in scale from broad frameworks for regions, districts and towns, to planning development or restoration for specific sites, working for community, industry, landowners, iwi and government agencies. Di has worked extensively in coastal landscape planning, natural character assessment and heritage landscape assessment, and developed the land typing and ecosystems frameworks that underpin planning and design for many areas.
14min Photograph by Bella Foster Lowe
POLLUTED INHERITANCE
Mike Joy
Senior lecturer in ecology and environmental science at the Ecology Group at the Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University. He researches and teaches freshwater ecology, ecological modelling, bio-assessment and environmental science.
24min
Recent writings include the publication, Polluted Inheritance: New Zealand’s Freshwater Crisis, and an essay, The making of a river radical, in The Journal of Urgent Writing.
A SHORT HISTORY OF IRRIGATION IN CANTERBURY
Rosalie Snoyink
Rosalie is a founding member of three local conservation groups: the Malvern Hills Protection Society that ran a successful campaign to save the Waianiwaniwa Valley from the building of a large dam and irrigation reservoir; the OurWaterOurVote group aimed at reinstating democracy in Canterbury’s regional politics; and the Mackenzie Guardians, charged with a mission to protect the landscapes, waterways and unique indigenous flora and fauna in the Mackenzie Basin from inappropriate development and land use.
22min
Recent history of water woes in Canterbury pdf
BRAIDED RIVERS – AN ENDANGERED LANDSCAPE SPECIES
MURRAY HICKS
Principal scientist at NIWA, river and coastal geomorphology. Murray specialises in sediment transport and related geomorphic processes in rivers and on coasts. His current research focuses on the downstream impacts of dams and flow diversions on river morphology and coastal stability.
17min
References:
Braided river simulation and time lapse (courtesy NIWA)
WATER IN THE LANDSCAPE AND PEOPLESCAPE
CHRIS PERLEY
Researcher affiliated to Otago University’s Centre for Sustainability, studying the philosophies and strategies around socio-ecological and land use systems.
Bathing in the Mist – We are connected through the functions and meanings of water that extend far beyond anything that involved the measures and adjectives of water in a jar. Visualise this. In the 1950s a Kuia with the spirituality of the ancients would perform a ritual of water. On a foggy day, when the heavy dew that ripens the apples was an inevitability, she would leave Lake Poukawa before dawn, walking 30 km down the Karamu, bathing in the mist. At the site of the tribal battles of 1857 she would wash herself in the heavy dew (hokonui) before calling a nephew to drive her home.
14min
References:
Thoughtscapes, Chris Perley's blog
video: Starling murmuration
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature
F. David Peat, link
Eric Collier, link
David Suzuki, link
Smetena, Die Moldau link