Q1: You’ve both published in this kai sovereignty/Indigenous food systems space before. What did you specifically want this book to do?
JS: The book is designed to inspire whanau and communities to think of kai growing as not simply an activity to feed family but also as a pathway to connect with our wider natural environments and communities. We talk about kai as whanaunga — as a relation, something we are connected to. This is a key pillar of kai sovereignty to reconnect with our cultural foodscapes.
JH: We also call out the long history of this country’s economy being founded on agricultural colonisation, we unpack what that means and explain how global agribusiness, Free Trade Agreements and big tech impacts on our land, sea and food scapes in Aotearoa.
JS: Previous writings have focused on academic audiences but this book addresses a wider audience to help stimulate change in how we perceive food and food growing activities.
Q2: Did working on it and talking to incredible people such as Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea and Teina Boasa-Dean take you to a far deeper level your own knowledge?
JS: The food heroes showcased in our book demonstrate the breadth and depth of existing kai sovereignty activities and has inspired us to progress our own practices as food growers. We now have a focus on seed saving techniques as the next learning pathway for ourselves here at Papawhakaritorito. We have always saved our seeds at the farm and have also enjoyed the exchange of seeds with visitors to our farm, but since engaging with the experts in this book, we hope to expand our seed saving activities.
Q3: Did you know much detail about each of these māra kai before you started the book and got to meet them?
JH: Yes we are very well connected with Indigenous communities here and overseas who are working in the space of kai, seed and soil sovereignty. This book was an opportunity to join up the kaupapa that communities, whanau and individuals are working on — we look at what is happening at place with the rebuilding of Indigenous food systems there is hope and wellbeing in front of us. It is important to provide positive encouragement and we take inspiration from the kai sovereignty work of others — that is what the book aims to do.
Q4: Their stories and their vision are so uplifting and full of determination. What would it take so that they could scale up and really start to make a dent in the broken food systems that lock whanau into poor health?
JH: One of the key barriers for Māori acheiving kai sovereignty is access to land. We have less that 4% of land in Māori hands so this often comes up as a barrier. Once on the whenua then we need to rebuild our knowledges and relearn our mara practices so that we build soil health and diversity in our food systems.
Q5: You are both incredibly experienced and skilled gardeners but tell us a couple of great tips you learned from some of these growers?
JH: One of the tips I have had reinforced through this research is biointensive planting of crops. Its like what Jared does with syntropic food forestry but on a smaller scale in the garden beds. It looks after the soil microbes and provides abundance in terms of kai.
Q6: The graphics throughout the book by design legend Johnson Witehira are so beautiful. How and when did he come on board?
JS: Our collaboration with Johnson began with an earlier project titled ‘Storying Kaitiakitanga’ funded by Our Land and Water National Science Challenge which explained how Māori act as kaitiaki to our natural environments. Johnson contributed to the storytelling dimensions through graphic designs that brought to light the Atua domains that underpin Māori ways of knowing and doing. This book extends and deepens those design elements to highlight the significant relationships between atua, kai, whenua, awa and tangata.
Q7: Why was it important to include stories from the Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa the Pacific?
JS: Indigenous Aotearoa has long standing links to the Pacific and beyond through the taonga kai that come from these oceanic connections. Aspects of the book focus on Indigenous food sovereignty more broadly, so linking Māori food growing practices to our Indigenous whanaunga from accompanying islands made sense. Highlighting these Native-to-Native connections also helped us to decentre the nation state as the normative measure of what gets to count as sovereignty practices.
Q8: We can’t go on producing unnourishing food the way we are, it’s so clear. It’s now a full-on crisis?
JS: When we continue to export our soil nutrients and clean water through the food commodities we ship offshore we continue to extract from, and diminish, the very source of our wellbeing — our soils and waterways. When we continue to normalise supermarkets as the obvious source of sustenance and nutrition for our families, we diminish our potential to be self sustaining, creative and connected to nature.
Q9: What are the calls to action this book issues to council planners, funders and policy makers so they can support small scale local food systems based on agroecology and
Indigenous wisdom?
JH: To build relationships with local food communities and to listen to what their needs are. Our food communities are diverse and have diverse needs, so start by engaging and listening. Let’s take a long term localised view of food production and ensure that Indigenous communities are at the centre of this.
10: What do you hope it sets alight?
JS: A passion for kai sovereignty to be stood up all over Aotearoa and that we rebuild bioregional food systems to feed ourselves and nourish the environment. These food systems need to have Māori at the centre. A fire to resist GMO’s and big tech in food and farming.
JH: I also hope that the Indigenous critique that we lay out in the book through three years of research is read and engaged with so we can keep building our understanding of the impact of commodity-led food systems like New Zealand’s on our ability to feed ourselves.
