Podcast episode image (above): Tau Lelaulu.

Listen to the Dangerous Architecture Podcast | 001: Carin Wilson and learning with your ancestors

I'm so excited to bring you the first episode of The Dangerous Architecture Podcast, and we are starting today with one of Ngā Aho’s Kāhui Whetu, and 2024 Te Tumu Toi Design Laureate Carin Wilson.

I asked Carin (who I first met as a student when he was taking Te Hononga Design Studio with Rau Hoskins), I asked him if we could talk about the relationship between Ngā Aho and Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZ Institute of Architects, and Te Kawanata o Rata, the covenant that was signed between both of these groups, in 2017.

So I'm asking about whanaungatanga, how we can build on this relationship and work well together as architectural workers. And in order to talk about how we can relate well together, Carin brings it back to whakapapa.

Carin: Whakapapa is not just about who I am, it’s about continuing to re-engage in the depth. And I think that that’s what's often lost on pākehā, who don't have the kind of heritage focus on deepening your understanding of the whakapapa.

In regard to that relationship with the Kawanata, I think that it is on the way to developing its own whakapapa…because like you, so many pākehā members of the institute have got to find their way to engaging in a more comprehensive way. Maybe for some, it might even be in a more generous way.

I love that language, and generosity also describes Carin and Jenni so well. It is a beautiful sunny day when I drive up to Carin and Jenni's house, Pukeruru. It’s a simple portal frame, or it would’ve been a simple portal frame, but then the design cranks at seven degrees at key points. When you first come in the driveway, you come up to a space which Carin says is like an atea. It’s this open space, this place for welcoming. And the building just comes and curves around you, kind of like the crook of an arm? And the whole effect of it then, turns your gaze out to the moana.

So there’s the house. There are a number of ancillary cabins and safari tents, so Carin and Jenni can host groups of people, which they do frequently. The detailing is extraordinary. From the timber sarking on the ceiling, to the little leather handles on the kitchen cabinets. It’s extraordinary in that it's crafted, and it's filled with care and attention, but it's not extravagant.

Carin has multiple workshops. Yes, workshops, plural. About half the floor space is given over the workshops. Woodwork, metalworking. I've actually lost count what some of them are for, it was extraordinary being in a house where so much of the footprint was given over to making. And communal making, it was so great!

Now, with a podcast, obviously you can't see it. But I wanted to start with a podcast partly so I could do a lot of work at home in my pajamas…and also, had I known that it involves building a fort out of blankets, I probably would've done this much sooner.

But you can see this house, Derek Kawiti in his show, the Drawing Board, season two, episode three. He takes us through Carin and Jenny’s place and covers some topics that I don’t get into so much here, so I'll make sure I include a link to that. Carin is about to begin by introducing himself with a pepeha, which in te ao Māori is a way of sharing your connections, a way of deeply grounding yourself to people and place.

Introducing Carin Wilson

Carin: Ngāti Awa rāua ko Tūhourangi te iwi. Te Rangihouhiri te hapū. Ko Pūtauaki te maunga. Te Awa o Te Atua rāua ko Rangitaiki te awa. Ko Atuhata Kingi taku matua tupuna. Ko Jackie Mahiti Wirihana Wilson taku papa.  Ko Nina Estuary na Bianca De Somo taku mama.  Ko Jenni taku hoa rangatira. Ko Tuia rāua ko Seth tāku children.

No Pukeruru ahau. Yeah, welcome. Welcome to  Pukeruru, our special place. It’s where we live, but it’s also a place that was built around our aspirations for whananga. Our wider family, but also my Ngā Aho whānau. You know, the collegial relationships that I’ve built in my practice are really super important to me. And we wanted to have a place where we could hui and we could share information, and just on our own terms, hang out together.

So that’s part of the whole idea of Pukeruru.

Abi: There was a meeting in Objectspace. People were invited to come hear a conversation and it was you, Jacob Scott,  Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Diane Menzies and  Karl Wixon, I think. I remember you talking about, you know, we’re on the waka - if you want on, jump on, but we’ve gotta look after our own now. To be able to sit there, and listen to you all talking about all the work you've put in for decades and then your hopes for the younger generations coming through.

And I was hoping as we talked today, that we could build this bigger, wider picture throughout time, and what that’s been like for you. And also because now you are, you know, going overseas and talking to other indigenous groups with this wider perspective of how things are shifting.

Carin: Yeah.

Abi: Yeah?

So here we are. We're in Carin’s office to talk about Te Kawanata o Rata, the covenant between Ngā Aho and Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects. And this is where Carin says, You know what? Before we talk about whanaungatanga, before we talk about how we relate well, we need to know who we are. Which kind of makes sense, right? How do you weave your ways of knowing and connection to someone else’s if you don't know them?

So Carin is going to go into a discussion about whakapapa. And he’s going to do it, not in some abstract way, but what whakapapa means to him, the people and the places that have shaped him, and the histories and narratives that he can reach back into.

And when Carin started talking, for a while I wasn't sure where it was going to go. But I just knew I had to sit and trust and listen, and at some point, something of what he's saying about whakapapa was gonna change the way that I approach designing spaces for people and places here in Aotearoa. This is not the sort of architecture talk you would get at university, or an NZIA event, but this is the kind of talk that I think a lot of us are wanting to hear; are needing to hear.

What I took away from this conversation is that whakapapa isn’t static. Whakapapa are connections that can be strengthened. And this was quite new to me; whakapapa is not just knowing who and which places I'm connected to, but whakapapa can be lived.

Starting with whakapapa

Carin: Yeah. I’m lucky because, Ngāti Awa first landed in Northland. And the Matātua waka made its way down the coast and finished it up at the Bay of Plenty, because they were looking for the signs that the Matakiti, who was muriwai on the waka had said, guiding signs about where to establish themselves in place. So there’s kind of two things about that. They were coming from Te Moananui-a-Kiwa. They sailed there, I like to think navigated. I think that both propositions go together because you’ve got to know how to navigate before you can sail the craft across the distances that they covered.

And then she was looking for a river mouth, a cave, and a waterfall. So they kept on moving down the coast all the way until they got to the mouth of the Whakatane River. And there they found all three within very short distance of each other. But the advantage for me as Ngāti Awa is that Tūhoe sprang out of those first, that generation.

So not only do we have the benefit of Ngāti Awa and all of our own stories, but we kind of have the benefit of the Tūhoe stories as well. Because there's a lot of interaction between Ngāti Awa and Tūhoe; always have been. It's never been an interaction built around enmity or, you know, or tensions.

It’s mostly been highly cooperative and that's enabled me to pick up a little bit of the narrative of both tribes, ‘cause they're slightly different. But Tūhoe’s more tuturu Māori because they never signed the treaty, and they always considered themselves to be independent of the whole government process, which is why Tūhoe are able to operate in their lands now in such a unique way.

But, being able to enjoy the diversity of both views of the world and their different views of the landscape and the space. Ngāti Awa, orienting much more towards the ocean ‘cause they’re on the coast, and then Tūhoe, occupying that inland space and having a whole philosophy about being of the forest, of the land children, of the mist, all of that.

So, in many ways I feel as if I have the advantage of being able to see both, and that’s a real gift. And then further than that, because Ngāti Awa first landed in Northland, and although the Matatua waka made its way all the way down to Whakatane, the waka actually came back under the navigation of Pui and pulled into Tākou Bay, which is in Northland.

So our story about Matātua is that the waka actually rests in the bay. So you get how incredibly rich that narrative is. Arrival, making first contact in Northland, voyaging down the coast, pulling into this bay here, perhaps letting some people off. I mean, we don't really know, but that voyage, tracking all the way down the coast and then finally finishing up at Whakatane and then coming all the way back to Northland, is just incredible.

And I have whakapapa to one of the tribes on the Whangarei harbour, but I don't really know that much about it because the land was gifted to us. And that whole gifting proposition is a little bit of a mystery at the moment. It’s something that I've got to discover more about. But that’s the great thing about whakapapa, you know, it’s a journey and it’s a journey that keeps on going.

And the richness of that journey is that fresh tupuna and the stories around those tupuna are turning up all the time. Whakapapa is not just about who I am, it’s about continuing to re-engage in the depth. And I think that that’s what’s often lost on Pakeha who don't have the kind of heritage focus on deepening your understanding of the whakapapa.

Friends of mine among the Ngāti Awa rohe, they can recite back to the first arrivals; Torua, the captain of the waka. One of our old kaumātua ching gave me our 360 page whakapapa. So when someone's born into the family, it's like, okay, let’s, so Enzo, my grandson is Enzo Atutahi, so his names relate to his Italian heritage and to our Ngāti Awa whakapapa.

So we’ve got that, and we can continue to explore. There's a richness. I guess what I’m trying to say is there’s a richness about it that I don’t think I’ll ever penetrate to the end of the possible understanding of all of that. Because my life will end before that.

And isn’t that an amazing thing - that it’s so rich and so deep that we can just keep on going with it.

Our connection to our whakapapa can be deepened by the way we live

So as Carin’s talking, I can feel something in my brain starting to shift. I had always thought whakapapa or connections to people in places throughout time is kind of static, you know, a record of what happened. But the way Carin talks about whakapapa, he’s talking about it as something dynamic and alive and something that can be lived. He’s talking about reaching back to those histories and those people and the way they connected with land and water at that time, and bringing those practices into the present as a way to reinforce those connections.

And in the months that follow this conversation, I start to get this hunger to know how my ancestors lived. I said at one point I was kind of embarrassed that I had not been interested in who my ancestors were. I don't feel embarrassed, now. I feel more like a more of a grief, to be honest. That my ancestors - my English, my Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Northumbrian - before industrialisation in Britain, they would have had practices that deeply connected them to the land. They would have had practices that helped them remember ancestral knowledge and made sure they passed on to future generations.

And I think it was this conversation that made me want to know my ancestors, more than a data way, like to get some kind of heart-connection that I can bring into my life now, into my architectural work now. And it seems kind of obvious that in order to relate to someone well, in order to appreciate another person’s practices of connecting to people in places throughout time: in order to do that fully, of course I need to know my own story.

Carin: What it presents is a different worldview. And then the worldview ranges across our habitation of the landscape, the families. My Tūhoerangi grandmother, so she was about 10 years old when Mount Tarawera erupted. We are told she dived into the lake because one of her aunts encouraged her, so that she wouldn’t get smothered in the ash. And then, when everything had calmed down, our people, my Turangihohiri whanau, who knew those Tūhoerangi folk - Because Tuhoerangi used to come down the stream from Lake Tarawera to collect kaimoana from the beach where we lived at the mouth of the rivers - Right? So we knew who they were, as a tribal entity in their own right. So when Paiwhenua survived, we took her in and she became effectively a whangai because she’d lost the rest of her family.

So she became part of my Kingi whanau, and my grandfather Akuhata married her because she was from Tūhoe. That story is really one of the most romantic stories in our whakapapa narrative. But it’s perfect because it explains the relationship between those tribes and how that relationship was formed by that seasonal movement. From the lake, down to the coast to collect the kaimoana, and then go back and winter over in the lake. So whakapapa is, you know, its richness just kind of goes on, on and on. And I really delight in that.

Abi: We gave our third-year students a reading, Onamata, Anamata. It’s about Māori futurisms, two Māori authors called Burgess and Painting. In it they explained whakapapa, and really beautiful language, but really clear language. And it made me think, this is actually kind of, almost shameful that I’ve been so disinterested in who's gone before me, that I haven't, you know, haven't learned who they are. So that’s something that I’m now starting to do.

Carin: Yeah, but don't let it hang you up. 'Cause we all start there.

Abi: Yeah.

Consider the birds

Abi: The thing that helped with my thinking is understanding time and how, uh, it made me think of whakapapa as a - you know, when you get a - I think it’s called a murmuration of birds, thousands of birds, and it’s fluid and dynamic and you’re connected to them in this web? And in the article they're talking about you’re connected not just to people, but to, you know, land and ocean.

And then they went: everything is in relation, therefore we can all be in good relation to each other. Which just kind of simplified stuff for me, I think? When I think about being the kind of person that my Māori friends can rely on. It was in that piece where they're talking about, they said’ “There’s no word in te reo for ‘the present.’” It’s just the past and the future, and they meet in one person. And in every moment we just choose what from the past we want to honour, and bring forward into the present. And what from the past do we want to leave behind.

What kind of future do you want to build? Do you really want to take that way of thinking into the future, or do you wanna change it? Do you wanna say it stops with you?

Carin: Yeah. I like the way you brought up the birds because I took just absolute delight in reading about a study that has been done about that. And the authors of that study reckon that you only need to keep an eye on the other six. So you are a part of a cluster of seven, effectively, and as long as you know what they’re doing, then you've got your bearings. So they’ve analysed that about birds, shoals of fish, everything.

When you think about it, it brings it down to a really essential simplicity. Like, if you only need to keep your eye on those seven around you, whichever the most important seven are, then you've kind of got a secure framework to keep moving in. Yeah.

Abi: Yeah. It’s not overwhelming. You can care for seven people about you as well. Yeah, exactly. You can hold them, they can hold you.

Carin: Yeah. Exactly.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m thinking about change, structural change, everything can seem a bit hard. Change seems hard. But then I think back to this, having those six or seven people around you, and they are your guide. None of us are responsible for changing mainstream architectural practice on our own, and none of us are doing this on our own.

I found this really encouraging. You know, just like a murmuration of birds is a massive pattern swirling in the sky', it can be changing and moving, but I'm no longer responsible for it changing in what I believe is the ‘right direction’ or a ‘good direction.’ I just need to live well, honour the relationships I have. Have those six or seven people around me that I can check in with, that I can also support. You know, I can uplift them. They can uplift me. That seems achievable and kind of feels like a weight off my shoulders.

Carin then turns to ancestral knowledge. And while he’s talking, I’m realising just how thoroughly pākehā, how thoroughly Western my viewpoint is, because I definitely have this tendency to reduce ancestral knowledge down to data. You know, something that can be mastered, controlled, owned, maybe?

And yet, the way Carin talks about ancestral knowledge is that it’s not only something that can guide the way he lives now, but by even being entrusted with his ancestral knowledge; it’s an affirmation of his character.

Carin: So in relation to all of that, my experience with our treaty claim was absolutely fundamental, because the claims process demands thoroughness. And we know that thoroughness is a kind of feature of what we respect as our knowledge system. If you’re going for a PhD, then thoroughness is kind of the bottom line. If you don’t get that level of thoroughness in your investigation, then you don’t get the PhD.

And the same thing happens with a treaty claim. Every possible stone is unturned in the achievement of the most comprehensive gathering of knowledge that you can; about what the claim is about, and why it is that you are willing to go and contest against your neighboring tribes, for example, and tough it out with them, over, you know, which piece of land or which stream or whatever is ours and which is theirs.

And you rerun that whole gauntlet of versions of the battles and the thing which is called the whenua tautohe, which is the contestable boundary. You drill down into all of that, and you kind of get to an understanding of what those neighbourly relationships are. And you understand how our tupuna fought with each other and what those fights were about and how we settled them. And they’re often by marriages and, you know, always about relationship.

And then finally, you arrive at a point where you feel that you’ve got the territory covered and that you can take your claim to the Waitangi tribunal. The claims are the best history books in the country as far as I can tell. You can get a shorthand version of our history in any book that you read. Anne Salmon, I’ve got them all here, but actually, [if] you really want to plumb the depth of those relationships with the whenua and with your tribal neighbours and with each other, then the treaty claims are the place to find it.

And they’re almost so thorough that each of us individually in our lifetime would probably not be able to arrive at that depth of understanding of our whakapapa alone. And so I think that that's an interesting way to look at how big the quest is, if you really want to take it on. Because we have the advantage - I have the advantage of having been able to talk to Ching and Bubble Simpson and look, you know, the wonderful old guys who took me under their wing, back in the eighties and nineties when we were working on the treaty claim and just offloaded everything that they knew, because that was the only way they knew how. They were not scholars, but they knew that by sharing the stories, then the most important parts, I would remember. You know, so they just kind of load all of that stuff up on you and allow it to go through the sieve of the knowledge that you retain and that becomes the essence of who you are.

But it’s just a fantastic process of creating confidence. I am all those things, you know, I am the person that they chose to give that knowledge to. I am able to shape my future, “ka mua ka muri,” you know, moving into my life in the knowledge of where I’m looking at that information that they've given me.

So it’s just so tremendously powerful. And meaningful, if you’re prepared to listen. And that is the other thing, it's kind of the power of that listening. I think the willingness to invest the time in it, the willingness to find the nuances in the story, so that you’re picking up those subtle bits as well.

So my dad, for example, he was on - there was an issue between Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa. And it was over one of our wahine who’d been stolen by one of the Tūhoe men. And there was a great deal of anguish about that. And it was finally settled in one of those traditional processes. So my father tells me he thinks he was about 14 years of age. So we’re talking 1920s, early. All the old kaumatua said, we are going down to Tūhoe, and you are coming. So there's a clue there. That’s like: knowledge transfer, why you are coming. Ah. ‘Cause we want you to see this.

So down he goes with them and they get down there and, all that process that we know on the marae, the greeting, the whaikorero and all of that takes place. And then now we’re down to the business of why we are here. And so Tūhoe lay out all of their treasures are set out on the whariki, and it's like the invitation is, well, now you are free to accept these gifts, as our acknowledgement that the behavior was inappropriate. And we want to atone for that. And we value our relationship. We want it to go on. We don’t want this to come between us. We are giving our wealth to you to make amends…sorted!

So, I mean, I'm lucky ‘cause my dad saw that, you know, he participated in that event only as an observer, but nevertheless, he was there. But what whakapapa does is that it makes the story relevant; it makes it passing on of the experience valuable. It adds something to who we are. ‘Cause that’s my story now, you know? So there are many dimensions to the whole proposition around whakapapa.

The most powerful of them for me is about identity. I’ve kind of got a certainty about who I am, and that certainty helps me in everything that I do. Every decision that I make as an artist in some way relates to that sense of certainty. You know, like, I can do this. I might be into territory that I don't know very well, and I might be at risk of engaging in the uh, the use of imagery that's not my own, or, it seems like it's embedded somewhere in my subconscious.

Do I have the right to use it? Well, what gives me that right is whakapapa; the understanding of its wider implications and the fact that as an artist, I can answer for it on terms that I'm secure in, you know? So yeah.

Te Kawanata o Rata

So now we are ready to talk about the collective relationship between Ngā Aho and Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects, as it’s set out in Te Kawanata o Rata.

Abi: I’m thinking about how I've been trying to learn what I can about the relationship between Te Kāhui Whaihanga and Ngā Aho. And the NZRAB. And Te Kawanata o Rata. That was what, 2016? 17? Yeah. Well, it’s almost 10 years ago now. Mm-hmm. So everything you’ve just talked about contestable spaces or finding those boundaries and talking it through and working out exactly how those relationships are shaped, I feel like that that needs to happen.

Carin: We haven’t really done that collect between our bodies yet. We haven’t really done that yet.

Abi: No. Yeah. But that is a really good, that just sets out a really safe framework for relating to each other, [especially] being on Māori whenua rather than trying some of these Western processes, which I think just don’t help us so much.

Yeah. I don't know what I expected to see. I remember reading about Te Kawanata o Rata and thinking like, right? Yes. I have architect friends who are saying things are changing really quite rapidly, but I guess I expected, I don't know. More…maybe more momentum from the front on the NZIA, NZIAB side?

Whereas what I feel like I’m observing among tangata tiriti is the real fire and momentum and shift in thinking is happening and you know, our governing bodies are gonna be scrambling to catch up. ‘Cause we’ve got the Kawanata o Rata now and, you know, I'm working towards registration, and I can't wait for things to happen at the structural level. So I think it’s really interesting what you're talking about, about having these conversations.

And I'm kind of embarrassed at how slowly - I am embarrassed at how slowly - the architecture profession as a whole has taken to honour tino rangatiratanga. I mean, in one breath we’re lamenting that all our architecture looks the same as in Australia and Britain and Europe and, the States. And yet there's this real kind of digging in, or entrenched view that doesn't want to explore what honouring tino rangatiratanga looks like.

When I did the research at uni, I was talking more about the Te Tiriti relationship, because I’m understanding more that the relationship is absolutely everything. But now that I'm starting to meet people from overseas and they’re talking about, the indigenous-settler relationship in other contexts - I don't know, I think I'll still keep talking about Te Tiriti, but I think I may start using language about Māori sovereignty more because it's more easily translatable overseas.

Carin: Hmm. In regard to that relationship with the Kawanata, I think that it is on the way to developing its own whakapapa. So, you’ve kind of got this, what we say in Ngāti Awa, “He manu hou ahau he pī ka rere.” “I'm a little bird, I'm just learning to fly.” Right? And that's how I'd characterise the relationship at the moment, because like you, so many Pakeha members of the institute have got to find their way to engaging in a more comprehensive way. Maybe for some, it might even be in a more generous way.

But finding that connection to what the Kawanata is about. You know, you've got your practice to run, and you've got your clients to look after, and you've got all those other things that you're engaged in that you, you have to do to, uh, produce good work. And, for somebody like me, what the Kawanata means is really easy. 'Cause I know, you know, I know it's derivation, and I know its intentions and all of that.

But for somebody coming to it afresh, and as you'll know, like of the hundred or so students who would've been there at the beginning in your first year as a student. And then they gradually get whittled down to the, you know, the number, and they kind of drift off in different areas or they choose different areas of specialisation and so on. But, of a hundred or so, you know, how many availed themselves of the opportunity to come into the Te Hononga program to actually come out on some of our projects and learn on the marae and have that experience and all that?

It's only a small number. So they're out there practising and they haven't even had any of the advantage of any of that experience that you've had so - that you've taken, you know, you've, you've actually made it a point of taking. So, they're having to make up ground. So we've gotta be a little patient with them.

But I know that the appetite is out there. Because I've talked with groups of architects before and the audience is always eager to learn and so appreciative of, you know, whatever I bring to the occasion, like the “Thank you. I didn't realize that.” So I feel as if we are moving strongly in the right direction.

But it just kind of takes this adjustment of your sense of who you are and why it's relevant to our, practice here in Aotearoa. And I think that that's slower coming to some people than others. And there will be some who will always be indifferent to it. Like, they just want to, you know, they just want to emulate their European or international traditions.

Get creative: Māori Boy by Witi Ihimaera

So I had this idea that for every episode, I would highlight a creative work. Probably a novel, maybe a song or a poem, I don't know. Because as someone who does a lot of research, I am reading nonfiction a lot. And because I know of my Western tendency, I want to reduce everything down to kind of data and information, and I feel like I'm missing some of the heart aspect of it. And when I'm honest, what's really helped open myself up to new ways of thinking and doing are the creative works, are the songs, are the novels.

So for this conversation about whakapapa and whanaungatanga, I reckon the best one would be Witi Ihimaera’s Maori Boy, his memoir. And - I don't normally read memoirs; I love science fiction - but even if you were only to read, even just within the first six chapters Witi takes us through his whakapapa. And not in a linear form in a Western way, but in the spiral way. And I found as I was reading it that what I had reduced to factual knowledge, right, when I read articles and things, Witi just made it come alive.

Because he not only recounts narratives that have been passed onto him, knowledge that's been passed onto him, but in the way he formats each chapter. He'll break them down to sections 1, 2, 3. And the third one, he's always making this connection between the narrative or the history he's just shared with us, and how that shapes the way he acts now. It's really powerful.

I will put a link to that on the podcast episode page, and let's get back to Carin. And I'm interested to know, how is Carin's creative work changing now that he's spending so much more time working with indigenous groups in other countries and other contexts?

Moving from appreciation to action

Abi: There's momentum happening overseas as well.

Carin: I think the momentum from overseas is actually fueling our pace here. Because their acknowledgement is highly encouraging, and meaningful. It's like, “Oh, you've done something that we, we hadn't even quite grasped the opportunity to steer ourselves, you know, the opportunity of a different direction to steer ourselves.” And they've just provided tremendous encouragement in seeing what we've done, and then running with it. It's amazing.

Abi: Now I'm trying to think ahead and like, what tools are we gonna need? So I guess I'm thinking as someone who's not Maori, how can we teach ourselves to behave well in a collective relationship with? But also what skills are we gonna need in 10, 20 years time, that we can start figuring out now?

'Cause like you're saying, everyone's busy in practice. But I'm hoping by getting different people to talk about some of the practices that they've changed how they go about the whole of their practice. Not just the design, but how they hold their relationships and stuff.

Someone else is going to learn a practice or figure it out because of their relationships that, you know, I wouldn't. Because I think we have a heck of a lot to learn from the momentum happening overseas, ‘cause every context is kind of different, right? So everyone's going to be able to figure out different things.

Carin: Every context is different, but there are also a lot of common threads. I've personally moved from indigeneity meaning Māori, in the narrowest sense, to indigeneity that now reflects relationship with the whenua. The connection within the importance of cultural practices. I'm able to see them across three continents now, and the Pacific. Right? And the common threads are undeniable.

So this indigenous view; it's a whole narrative framework in itself. I think that it supports the idea of being more attentive to our own. So that when we are involved in that conversation, we can actually offer something to the conversation. Yeah.

Abi: Yeah.

Carin: Rather than just, “Ah, wow.” You know, like that, that's not enough. You really need to be a participant. And the thoroughness of your intention becomes a really important component of why you want to become competent and capable in that area. So you can, you can participate in that discussion.

Fuel for creativity and innovation

I know what Carin's talking about. I have been at so many architecture events where a Māori person is sharing their expertise, and there's an amazing tauiwi and pākehā turnout, and everyone's going, “Wow, yeah, that's so great.” But that appears to be where our engagement with this knowledge, that's so generously shared with us, that appears to be where that engagement ends.

And Carin is saying no, the knowledge is shared with us in order that we can act differently. We know that we are not trying to learn more about Māori culture and Māori ways of living in order to become better tauiwi or pākehā architectural workers. We are doing this so that our work can be transformed, so that we can contribute back to Māori aspirations something tangible.

This links back to the idea of decolonising not being a metaphor, not being a mindset, not being a way of thinking, but it has to result in tangible outcomes. Our architectural work needs to enable the transfer of stolen land back to mana whenua. It needs to enable Maori ways of living and being. And as Carin is about to explain, it needs to be architectural work that opens up creative possibilities, instead of shutting them down.

Carin: From as long as I can remember, I've wanted to know more about the cultures of other people, and I've wanted to study their religions and understand why they finished up in that corner. I've wanted to understand the kaupapa, if you like, around the building of those temples and those buildings and the extraordinary concepts behind some of these absolutely amazing works that have been created by cultures around the world. They've all been indigenous cultures in their own way. And I think that they're broadening my understanding of what it is to be Māori and to practice as Māori, but also just broadening my understanding of being creative and innovative.

The fact that we might have gone on three, five, 10,000 or in the case of our neighbours in Australia 70,000 years ago is kind of irrelevant to me. It's what they were doing then in getting to understand their whenua and building their relationships with the landscape is as relevant today as it was then. Yeah. So there's all that rich knowledge available to us from their experiences.

The other thing that just occurred to me while you were talking before, is that what slows some people in their appetite to pick up these more elusive dimensions of what it is to practice architecture or to practice design, or even to be what my path is, which is the making as well, is that the degree that you're studying is so full of promise. It really truly does open up a world of, you know, the introduction of things like critical thinking.

And then, you know, those first, I've seen some of the most amazing concepts come out of First Year Studio. And it's like suddenly you've got a slender grasp of a language that's a truly enabling language about your own growth and development and so on. But the tragedy about that is that it, it seems to over a five year period. Narrow down into conventions about practice. That's a real challenge to this notion that I have about identity. If your identity is suddenly gonna have to run through that sort of narrow, that narrow gauntlet of, of…

Abi: ‘good design.’

Carin: Yeah. Yeah. Whereas what I've seen come out in those first sort of opportunities to engage with just the most delicious, explosion of “Wow. So this is what creativity is.” You know, “This is what this profession is promising to give me and the opportunity.” So, I think it's mean to say, the process of learning produces a kind of dumbing down, but it's gotta be said for what it is and we have to be truthful about it.

And holding on to that sense of my creative perspective is the first thing that I'm going to honour. I'm, I want to honor that before any of the sort of the practised drivers that tend to try and modify my creative impetus. And suddenly, they produce a kind of loss of confidence in my inherent creativity, and it's trying to steer me in a different [direction]. You understand what I'm talking about?

Abi: Yeah, I do. I guess I saw not only in learning to practice as tangata tiriti, that it would, um, I would be able to honour relationships, but also it's a chance to just flip my way of approaching creativity as well. Because it's no longer about - well, it's not abstract for a start. How in First Year you don't even talk about where the land is or the narrative, when in real life you are always building on someone's whenua. You start with concepts about light and abstraction, and compression and release, and all these things that we do.

But I just feel like there's so much creative potential in that, whether it's through an architecture practice, or students working in design studio, in navigating the relationships of how all of us connect to the whenua, like, to Māori land. Whether it's through ancestry in your case, or through Te Tiriti o Waitangi in my case. But that, that just feels like there's so much dynamic and creative potential that I'm just not getting from Western architecture practice. Yeah.

Te Tiriti opens up new possibilities

Carin: Yeah. So, the pepeha that I had to learn when I was working on the first Māori television station has stayed with me forever. It's one that I'm really fond of repeating, which is why I'm doing it now, but the pepeha begins with "Hūtia te rito o te harakeke, kei hea te kōmako e kō?"

And it's just unbelievably insightful. “If you pluck out the centre stem of the harakeke, how will the Bellbird sing?” This proposition about life becoming a process of shutting down on the singing, rather than life kind of opening up the opportunities for the singing to become more enriched, and actually enriching the life of the singer. In a way that only pepeha can do, you know, they present us with these beautiful, metaphorical concepts in the most, in a delightful language context.

You can fly your own meaning and interpret it in many ways, but I just see those two lines. You know, it goes on to say, I say unto you, what is the most important thing in the world, “He tangata, he tangata, he tangata” People have grasped the other end of the pepeha, and found a lot of meaning in that. But it's actually, I reckon, well, for me anyway, it's at the beginning that it makes its most profound statement.

Because there's a lot of shutting down [that] goes on. There's a lot of shutting down going on around the treaty at the moment. There's not a sense of, you know, what it liberates, if it's viewed in a more generous way. There's not a sense of what's even possible for those who aren't tangata whenua, if they really climb into the concepts.

Those seven fundamental, those seven core concepts that were written into the language, the Māori language of the treaty - which essentially, if you think about the way Māori language works, there are fundamental concepts that frame or persuade everything else that's constructed around them.

So to mention ‘taonga,’ it's not a word that sits in isolation, as a language concept. It's a word that sits in relation to every other word in the treaty document. If you take the notion of ‘ata noho,’ the promise of a place to live quietly, it resonates in the same way in relation to every other word in the document.

So, understanding language constructs, and being wise enough, because wisdom is about generosity. I think, you know, the wisest people that I know are people that have exhibited an unusual generosity of listening, or of participation, or willingness to engage. And seeing one word in its wider context is a way of actually discovering the essence of the meaning of the document.

And I think that the missionaries knew that when they drafted it, and our tupuna knew that when it was read to them, they knew that they're almost like the stepping stones by which you find your way through the true meaning of the treaty. And if you're not linking them with each other, you don't get it.

So a pākehā worldview, it semantically it works a little bit like the alphabet. Which is a linear, it proposes a linear way of exploring thought. The alphabet, it just runs a to z; 26 letters. But as a way of exploring Māori thought, it's very, very limited. And I have also formed a conclusion like Marshall McCluen did, that is a way of exploring creative thought, it's also very, very limiting.

So you've somehow got to get outside of that sort of linear construct, that meaning is taking from any number of those individual letters in the alphabet and joining them together. Whereas the proposition around taonga or any of those Māori definitions, they weren't founded in that linear context. They exist in a much more global sense. So how I arrive at the point where I understand the pepeha, ‘Hutia te rito,’ is if you take any one of those words and explore them in isolation, you say, “Oh, this is what they meant.” You really miss the point.

Abi: Mm. I gotta go back and look over it again now. Yeah. Carin, thank you. One, for meeting me today. It was really lovely to sit with you and Jen and uh, showing me around you, beautiful, evolving whare. And also for - it's been like, 25 years since you and Rau started Te Hononga Design Studio, right? Yeah. So I wanted to just acknowledge all the work that you put into that, which meant that someone like me could come crashing through a few years ago and benefit from all the foundations that you put in place at that school. And, yeah.

Carin: Well, I was like you back then. I was something of a passenger at the beginning because Rau and Saul and Rewi, of course, they laid the foundation for that. But it just happened that it made perfect sense to me in the context of my practice. And it was like, “I'm gonna hitch myself to that pony,” because I understand what they're on about, and where they're where they're going, and I'm want to be on that ride. So.

Abi: Yup, that's pretty much how I felt!

I would love to know what you thought of the conversation I just had with Carin. To know what stood out for you, whether it was the idea that in order to relate well, we need to know who we are. Or was it finding those six or seven people around you that can be your guides and your support, or maybe it was simply the idea that we can't be passive recipients of Maori knowledge. We need to act on it and contribute to seeing tino rangatiratanga in Aotearoa.

I would love to hear from you, whether you're a student or you're a practitioner, the kind of architectural work you're involved in, what context or country you're working in, your questions, who you'd like me to talk to in future?

You can contact me through the Dangerous Architecture podcast website, dangerousarchitecture.rocks (it was cheap and I thought it was funny). So that's dangerousarchitecture.rocks.

One quick final thing. I'm doing this in my spare time around paid work and if you've found this conversation encouraging, or helpful, a small donation would actually go a long way. And if you're broke, you know, you might be a student. You can also support by sending a podcast link to someone you know who's asking these kind of questions.

Ngā mihi nui, thank you, for spending the last hour or so with me.

Tihei mauri ora.