He Pā Mataora—Learning to live with the Living Pā: Final Report
Executive Summary
As Māori, we are facing massive challenges in our world including the protection and nurturing of our identity, language, values, culture and tikanga—the freedom to be Māori in our everyday lives is vital. At the same time, we are dealing with the impact of ongoing climate change, which affects not only how we live and work today, but also how our mokopuna will do so in the future. Against that backdrop, the Living Pā building project represents our Te Herenga Waka marae community’s search for a future focused building that talks to our Māori values and tikanga, who we are, and who we want to be. The Living Pā building and, by association, our He Pā Mataora research project, is entirely focused on achieving a healthy, safe, resilient and beautiful future based on mātauranga Māori and place-based initiatives and interventions.
Our He Pā Mataora research project took the rare opportunity afforded in the lead-up to opening Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s Living Pā building in December 2024 to explore the needs and challenges of moving an entire marae community into more climate adaptive and resilient practices. The project was built around four interrelated pātaka or storehouses of knowledge, focused on tikanga (Māori cultural practices), reo (Māori language), ako (learning and teaching) and taiao (environment), to explore effective and culturally relevant examples of living, learning and working more sustainably, as Māori, within an urban, pan-Māori context.
The research programme for He Pā Mataora built on the history and vision of our marae, our connections with other Māori communities that have embraced living buildings, and exemplar sustainable practices. As part of the project, we hosted wānanga, visited other inspiring living building sites, interviewed experts and knowledge holders, generated case studies, constructed a framework that reflects our tikanga and sustainability aspirations, collated a small but bespoke Māori corpus, and explored the potential of AI and virtual reality to enhance the educational power of the Living Pā. We also gave conference presentations, developed a new degree major in kaitiakitanga including a course on He Pā Mataora, developed innovative teaching resources, made a poster, a ‘how to guide’ and a set of short videos, and wrote four articles (one for each of the pātaka). Our research outputs and the findings therein will be applied to our local practice at Te Herenga Waka marae, and within our teaching and research programmes, but ultimately the value in this project is how much we can share our learnings and resources with other Māori communities, so together we can be better prepared to face the climate change challenges ahead.