Contribution short abstract:

What does it mean to know? How is knowledge attained? Where is it stored until we find it and decide to record it in another format? Following in the footsteps of Māori experts and scientists studying the disease threatening the kauri forests of Aotearoa changed my understanding of these questions.

Contribution long abstract:

Everything that has happened has left a mark on the earth. In 2019, I began walking through the forest accompanying pathologists and Māori elders trying to understand and halt the microscopic serial killers decimating kauri trees. I was soon able to read human interventions in the presence of some species and in the absence of many others. Walking under different weather conditions and at different times, I also became sensitive to multispecies events. The historical texts and photographs that informed my doctoral research, the stories Māori elders shared with me, and the scientific measurement of disease progression, everything found an equivalence in the landscape. As I kept walking, I discovered myself inside an archive where nothing was linear or organised but everything was logical and connected. Each piece of mobile information spoke directly to another era, anticipating it, warning about it, or, retrospectively, making it intelligible.

My PhD dissertation explored the production of knowledge at the interface of scientific biosecurity and mātauranga Māori. I suspected that the forests, the space where this knowledge would be reached, and, above all, the intimate and prolonged contact with the trees, were going to be decisive in the study and understanding of the microorganism-induced disease. I was in no way prepared for what walking into that living landscape -where each kauri, artifact, or patch of forest acts as a repository of information- was going to do to me and to my understanding of what knowing means.