Māori knowledge is an intergenerational knowledge form that's developed in place through intergenerational
observation and connection with the land. And that connection with the land is really
about being co-producers and co-creators with nature.
So not above nature but actually being a part of nature.
Kia ora, tēnā koutou. Ko Jessica Hutchings ahau.
I’m a descendant of Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Huirapa. On other side my mother is from India, from Gujirati. I live here, on a small farm called Papawhakaritorito.
I hail from the tribe of Ngāi Tahu, down in the South Island, Te Wai Pounamu, in Aotearoa New Zealand,
and on the other side I'm from Gujarat, India. Sometimes I'm known as a 'Mindian', a Māori Indian.
And I live on a little whānau food farm, a little family food farm, just north of Wellington with my wife, Jo,
my dog, Tahi, and my mum, who lives in a little whare [house] just over there in the house next door.
So the Hua Parakore system was developed by Te Waka Kai Ora, the National Māori Organics
Collective in Aotearoa, and it's the first Indigenous verification system for certifying
or verifying pure kai, organic kai [food], but using Indigenous values, Māori principles,
Māori understandings of how to produce natural food. So 'hua' literally means a product
and 'parakore' literally means free from rubbish or harm or toxic waste or chemicals.
So Hua Parakore – you could understand it in English as organics, but for us we're not using a
Western model to try and come back to Indigenous understanding, so it just is: Hua Parakore.
It's a framework now and it's been picked up by Māori organic growers, soil scientists, it's been picked
up by cooks, by fermenters, so it's used kind of right across the food system as a way to
bring Indigenous values into kai [food]. So the Hua Parakore sits within a Māori worldview,
so we can actually use the Hua Parakore principles or values to help us think about what that worldview is.
That worldview is interconnected, it's holistic, it doesn't privilege humans over nature.
Something that's really important to understand about the Māori worldview is
that it is a complete and valid way of living as Māori and of understanding the world,
and one of the impacts of colonisation for Indigenous peoples all over the world was
that our knowledges were seen as primitive, as savage, as naive, as not worthy, as not
scientific, but we have hundreds of years of scientific knowledge as Māori through
intergenerational observation and practices of gathering and collecting kai moana or kai [food]
from the environment. So it's not a theoretical framing of the natural world
for Māori, it's actually a lived reality for us and we're living it every day.
The Hua Parakore differs from the other current four organic verification schemes in New Zealand
because it's Māori, because it provides an Indigenous pathway, a kaupapa Māori [Māori values] pathway
for Māori growers to tell a Māori story about their food production.
And that is so important.
The process for the Hua Parakore is kaupapa Māori [Māori values] driven, so it's really
relational and having been both certified organic with Organic Farm NZ and then also
too being Hua Parakore verified, there's just stark differences in the processes between
Hua Parakore and the other Western certification systems. And an example of that is in Western
certification, organic certification systems we have- I fill out paperwork, send off an
email, an auditor comes out, it might be a different auditor from year to year, they're
on the farm for three or four hours, he or she's read the paperwork, and then we go
for a walk around the farm and they've gone. But with the Hua Parakore we're actually about
building communities, and building communities which are resilient, which are transformational.
And so when this farm received its full Hua Parakore verification we had a hui [gathering]
of about 60 to 70 people up here. It was really kind of like almost gaining collective consent.
You know, we walked around the farm, we had people from the Māori organics group with
us who asked questions in relation to the kaupapa [values].
Then we had other Māori people there steeped in mātauranga Māori [Māori knowledge] and te reo [Māori language]
who were also, too, asking us questions. And so in lots of ways it's a learning framework,
we get to ask these questions and we get to respond but then other people who have come
to that hui, or that final verification, get to add their whakaaro, or their thoughts, as well.
It takes a full three years to become Hua Parakore verified and it's a community
process, you know, we're bringing people along with us, we're strengthening our own knowledge
systems, we're building our own ways and understandings of how to be growers within our own cultural
practices, to tell our own kaupapa Māori [Māori values] stories in Aotearoa.
Māori food sovereignty isn't something that we achieve as a one-off. It really is a way
of life. It's about connecting with our food system, it's about understanding our food system,
it's about activating our politics around the global food system and about demonstrating
resistance. It's about engaging again with kind of diverse local economies so that we
can restore and rebuild the food systems from which our tūpuna [ancestors] lived and from which we come from.
So there's lots of layers to Māori food sovereignty. One, it's on that personal level of actually,
you know, needing to decolonize our food system and our gut
and the way that we approach food. But it's also, too, at a systems level within community,
rebuilding our cultural landscapes. And then of course it's at that political level, which
is really important, that we can activate at that political level.
Māori knowledge systems and whakapapa [genealogy] is not about this very reductive understanding
of the world where we shut things down and say, 'Oh this is ours, this is ours, this
is our way of knowing' . The Hua Parakore framework and way of being is a healing way of being,
and so really we want to bring as many people into it as we can.
Pākehā [non-Maori New Zealanders] can support Māori food sovereignty by becoming really strong allies,
and that's not just in food sovereignty that's in ngāmea katoa, in everything, to become good Treaty partners
to become Tangata Tiriti [people of the Treaty] in Aotearoa, is a really important role for Pākehā to take.
And if we think about Māori worldviews as being interconnective and inclusive
and the notion of whakapapa [genealogy] as kind of moving out, you know, and bringing
people in, that's really what we're wanting to do in the Hua Parakore. You know we've
got a vision for Aotearoa of having Hua Parakore farms and food producers all across the country
connecting up and returning us back to eat our cultural landscapes again.