Ko Rotoiti te Moana
Mauri Monitoring (2024)
Mahi Maioro Professionals collaborated with Te Runanga o Ngati Pikiao Trust to gather real time water quality data and combine it with Mātauranga Māori to give a holistic and relevant understanding of the water quality and the overall mauri of Lake Rotoiti.
2024 International Indigenous Research Conference
12-15 November 2024
Presentations by Mahi Maioro
'Ko Rotoiti te Moana'
(Dr Te Rina King-Hudson & Dr Kepa Morgan)
Te-Rina and Kēpa presented ‘Ko Rotoiti te Moana’. This project brings together Ngāti Pikiao epistemology with innovative real-time water monitoring technology, crowd-sourced photos, marae surveys, and intergenerational knowledge transfer, to strengthen Ngāti Pikiao rangatiratanga over te mauri o te wai. This talk included a walk-through of the online dashboard, which presents real-time changes in terms of mauri. Regular and holistic mauri monitoring empowers Ngāti Pikiao as hunga kaitiaki to help realise mauri ora o Te Roto Whaiti I kitea e Ihenga i ariki ai a Kahumatamomoe for present and future generations.
'Ka Mua, Ka Muri – Historical Timelines through Ngā Tirohanga Māori'
(Dr Olly McMillan)
This presentation focused on the development of historical timelines for two recent Mahi Maioro projects. The first project, on the Waiāri River, looked at historical changes to the rohe and the river from the perspective of Tapuika Iwi, and used this historical timeline to provide context on a current day water take from the awa.
The second project, Rotoitipaku, looked at a historical assessment of changes to mauri as a result of landfilling activities on a culturally significant site. The cumulative impacts over time experienced by iwi and hapū members provides a basis for developing a remedial strategy for the future.
Within the talk, Dr Kēpa Morgan also discussed recent workshops on cumulative assessment using Indigenous-based principles with First Nations in western Canada.
New Zealand is touting a Green Hydrogen economy, but it will face big environmental and cultural hurdles as freshwater has enormous significance to Iwi and Hapū. At this time, Iwi/Hapū views on hydrolysis as a consumptive use of water are not widely understood. If cultural complexity is ignored, Green Hydrogen infrastructure or processes may fail to achieve an appropriate fit within Aotearoa New Zealand society.
The mauri0meter takes data from an Adroit Environmental IoT monitoring system and overlays that within a cultural health monitoring perspective to monitor the waters of Rotoiti by both Western measures and by traditional measures. The data is loaded to a dashboard specific for the Rotoiti and an example of some output is given below.
10 August, 2022
17 September 2021
Mahi Maioro Professionals Pou Hautū, Dr Kēpa Morgan FEngNZ has been appointed to the ESR Strategic Science Advisory Panel. The appointment recognises the contribution that Mātauranga Māori has to offer to environmental and scientific research and coincides with a concerted effort by ESR to make Mātauranga Māori a part of their DNA.
8 September, 2020
Dr Kēpa Morgan introduced the mauri-0-meter to Year 13 Tourism students at Rotorua Girls' High School. The workshop assisted their journey of learning about the Kaituna and the role of Kaitiakitanga.
Radio NZ, 30 August 2020
Iwi in Rotorua have brokered an agreement for a new plan for the discharge of treated waste water, wai tātari, in the city.
Pokapu Akoranga Putaiao, 2015
In 2012, the Ministry for the Environment launched its Environmental Recovery Plan. Environmental law in New Zealand recognises the need to protect the ‘intrinsic values of the environment’ or the ‘mauri’.
Ngati Pikiao Engineer receives IPENZ Supreme Technical Award
2016
Dr Kēpa Morgan received the IPENZ Furkert Award for Sustainability and Clean Technology.
Kepa Morgan: Heeding the taniwha can help avert expensive blunders
14 June 2011
Two cases show that Indigenous wisdom could be linked to unknown factors, writes Dr Kepa Morgan
2015
This seminar describes the contribution that the Mauri model has made to better understanding the complexity of New Zealand's worst environmental disaster.