Ancient lifeways of Tamaki lectures...

Ian Lawlor, archaeologist at Mangere Arts centre

It was interesting to listen to the "Ancient Lifeways of Tamaki" lectures/talks last night. There were quite a lot of people who come to listen and I was very interested in Ian Lawlor's presentation of the Mangere Ihumatao area's history which was both amazing and disturbing.

The amazing part of it was that there was documentation from excavations that showed the area had been inhabited probably as one of the first areas that Polynesians came to live and cultivate in New Zealand and then adapted into what we now know as Maori practices over time.

One of the sites excavated even had Moa bones carbon dating to around 1100s well before the English discoverers came. The early Maori even had sophisticated garden systems whereby they were even able to support the growing city of Auckland in the 1800s when the first English settlers were still growing accustomed to the land.

Unfortunately, due to Western ways of thinking and the economic growth of Auckland, he spoke about how many of the volcanic mountains were decimated and quarried in providing for the road ways of Auckland and it's progress.

Today many of those mountains no longer exist except for aerial photographs of the area back in the 1800s and 1900s. Therefore, many Maori descendants of the area are only seeing a part of the landscape that hasn't yet been destroyed although the current occupation of Ihumatao is challenging Fletcher Living to not buy or build on their sacred lands.

From an Indigenous Researcher's perspective it was also interesting to note that the Intellectual property of the matters discussed did not explain how Maori would benefit from this knowledge. I suppose it is something for us to continue to talk about...