ANTHRO 227: Tikanga and Kinship: Māori ‘ownership’ of Rivers

What is whakapapa according to Marcus Winter?

Whakapapa is a framework that links all animate and inanimate, known and unknown phenomena across terrestrial and spiritual worlds.

It:

• maps relationships

• organises mythology, history, knowledge, tikanga, philosophies, spirituality

• preserves/transmits knowledge across generations

• sits at the heart of Mātauranga Māori

• means genealogy & shows whānau connections

What does Povinelli mean by “geontopower”?

A mode of governance that operates by creating and enforcing a strict division between “Life” and “Nonlife”, thereby assigning value & agency to certain entities while denying it to others (e.g., rocks or indigenous concepts of kin) to justify possession and control.

e.g. if your ancestor is a mountain, you are relegated

What is “cramped space”

Maori having to assert tikanga, whakapapa relationships, guardianship, and river personhood inside colonial legal, neoliberal, and Crown frameworks that limit full expression of te ao Maori

Implications of geontopower on “cramped space”

• Geontopower exposes how Indigenous peoples are forced to operate in “cramped spaces” created by colonial governance

• critiques assumptions that Indigenous people cannot differentiate what has “agency”

• illuminates how Indigenous worlds struggle to stay relevant under late-liberal power structures

“Ko au te Awa, ko te Awa ko au”

“I am the River, the River is me'“

• Expresses whakapapa: inseperable relational identity between people & river, mutual wellbeing, life force and kinship

Why was the Whanganui River settlement significant

• legally recognised the river as a living being

• acknowledged Maori cosmology in law

BUT

• river was categorised like a child/incapacitated adult

• private property rights untouched

= recognition but still constrained by colonial legal power

What is the Waikato River issue about?

Involves

• Maori rights to care for and manage their ancestral river

• Environmental threats (e.g., power company use & heating water)

• Treaty settlements

• Neoliberal pressures (privatisation, resource exploitation)

• Need for kaitiatanga control within colonial constraints

How do Maori understand “ownership”

There is no direct word for ownership like in English

Expressed instead via:

• mana

• rangatiratanga

• authority to speak and care for resources

Ownership = responsibility, status, guardianship, not exclusive possession

What is Tikanga in relation to land and water

Tikanga guides:

• moral behaviour

• environmental care

• guardianship

• obligations

• protection of future generations

It is relational, contextual, negotiated, and about fairness and group rights

Common Law

• individual exclusive rights

• ownership and possession

• colonial tool used to justify land appropriation

• duty to “develop/improve” land

Tikanga

• Collective relationships

• shared rights & obligations

• authority & mana

• responsibility to kin & environment

Tuakana-Teina

Fundamental concept organising Maori society

What is the Tuākana–Teina principle in ownership?

Tuākana = elder/leader

Teina = junior/younger

It structures:

• authority

• who can “be in charge”

• obligations

• how rights/responsibilities in resources are worked out

And radiates from family to iwi level.

How do ‘a’ and ‘o’ categories express relationships?

“a” = dominance, active authority

“o” = subordination, passive, dependent relationships

They grammatically encode power, care, and relational structure

“a” category

compared to a celectr\\

"a" used when you are the senior addressing the junior (teina)

“o” category

compared to the terrestrial realm which includes all the things that people use

used when you are the junior addressing the senior (tuakana)

Ontological submission

Being forced to submit one’s way of being, knowing, and relating to the world to a dominant worldview (ontology)

Ontological submission in the context of the Whanganui River

Maori being rrequired to talk about their relationships with ancestral water bodies using Western, colonial concepts of the self and ownership, rather than their own relational worldview

Ontological ‘clashes’ in the negotiation and settlement of claims over

Rivers

Concepts of “ownership” —> Common law vs tikanga