CARE. WORKING WITH THE “MARGINS OF THE MARGINS”

In the backdrop of the inequalities that are produced and sustained by processes of colonisation and neoliberalism, CARE, [Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation], seeks to build spaces of co-creation with Indigenous communities. They create alternative frameworks of development, amidst the ongoing struggles for livelihood experienced by Mãori, the “margins of the margins”, with solutions emerging from lived experiences.

- Christine Elers and Mohan J. Dutta

Solutions created by Mãori at the margins offer the basis for imagining possibilities that challenge how mainstream society is organised. In one such culture-centered intervention developed by Whãnau [extended family] in Feilding, preventing further ancestral land loss and protecting the river from neoliberal local government extractions are seen as a way for sustaining life and livelihood.

An advisory group of Whãnau participants in Feilding note the continual erasure of their voices as the key challenge to overcome, noting the construction of a stopbank on the remaining acres of ancestral land.

The construction violated the sovereignty of the Whãnau, challenged the health and wellbeing of members, and erased them by not engaging them in participatory processes. Against this backdrop, the advisory group supported wider Whãnau members and their decision to occupy the land on the banks of the river, at the sites of the construction, to disrupt the erasure and to stop the illegal development.