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Paper short abstract

This project explores and digitally activates the entanglements of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ in the context of historical Europe-Oceania relations and Māori cosmo-ontology through the lens of Indigenous and geological storytelling practices relating to pounamu (greenstone from Aotearoa New Zealand).

Paper long abstract

According to Māori cosmo-ontology, pounamu is engrained with a multifaceted significance that extends beyond the mineral itself – or the ‘object’ or ‘thing’ it is shaped into – and, therefore, beyond what is commonly framed as ‘cultural heritage’ or ‘natural history’. The land where pounamu is found has been subject to historical as well as environmental fluctuations, storytelling practices, and international geological inquiry. Pounamu has shaped and been shaped by encounters between Māori iwi (tribes), between locals and early explorers, as well as natural and spiritual forces.

Setting out by tracing pounamu at European anthropological and ‘natural history’ museum institutions and researching relevant provenances, this project seeks to digitally assemble a kaleidoscope of stories situating pounamu in its net of living relations, reconnecting ‘exiled’ pounamu with its (hi)stories of origin and re-activating its taonga-ness (‘treasure-ness’). By reading pounamu formations – both in museum spaces and in wider ecological landscapes – as archives of combined natural-cultural knowledge, narratives that centre the more-than-human can be unravelled.

Pounamu comes alive in Māori stories that transcend notions of temporality and environment, whereas geologists study pounamu formations and sediments to uncover the Earth’s tectonic history and long-term environmental changes. These comprehensive notions of time and space will be captured through enactive fieldwork, as reflected in in-situ pounamu monitoring, collection and preservation practices in Aotearoa New Zealand; with a focus on related storytelling practices. Insights and assembled stories will be made digitally accessible as part of a collaborative digital archive for Māori communities.