E tika te rere o te kuaka: Indigenous observations of a changing environment

We are honoured to bring you this online kōrero with Rikki Solomon (Aotearoa) and Bobby Schaeffer (Alaska). We are also extremely lucky that our Kāhui member and Pou Tikanga (he tūranga hou) Ruia Aperahama will facilitate the kōrero.

This webinar takes its name from the whakatauki about the kuaka (godwit), who connects the two lands of Aotearoa and Alaska. In Māori understandings, the cries of the kuaka are loud as they migrate between Alaska and Aotearoa, a flight of 12,000km. Ancestors navigating the moana observed their course during the day and listened to their cries at night to guide them.

In this webinar, we bring together Indigenous experts Rikki Solomon (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa, Rangitāne-o-Tamaki-nui-a-rua) and Bobby Schaeffer (Iñupiaq), to guide a different kind of climate change conversation. Our speakers bring vital, place-based knowledge, and experiences of change that spring from and are centred around the environment. Research, conversation and action around climate change has much to learn from this relational and experiential approach, steeped in ancestral wisdom and practice.