In Conversation with Carin Wilson

Indigenous Urbanism

EPISODE SUMMARY: On this episode of Indigenous Urbanism, we speak with Carin Wilson, a Ngāti Awa artist, designer and craftsperson, whose urban and built works include public and private projects with a cultural focus, frequently created in collaboration with architects, designers and other artists.

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GUESTS: Carin Wilson

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Jade Kake: Tēnā koutou katoa

Nau mai haere mai ki te Indigenous Urbanism, Aotearoa Edition, Episode 4.

I’m your host Jade Kake and this is Indigenous Urbanism, stories about the spaces we inhabit, and the community drivers and practitioners who are shaping those environments and decolonising through design.

On this episode of Indigenous Urbanism we speak with Carin Wilson, a Ngāti Awa artist, designer and craftsperson with studios in Te Tai Tokerau and Tāmaki Makaurau. Carin’s urban and built works include the origination and development of public and private projects with a cultural focus, frequently in collaboration with architects, designers and other artists.

Carin is a significant figure in New Zealand art and design, and has had a career in the arts spanning more than four decades.

We sat down with Carin at his home in Mt Albert to discuss his life and his work.

Ko wai koe? Nō hea koe?

Carin Wilson: Ko Pūtauaki te maunga, Ko Mātaatua te waka, Ngāti Awa te iwi, Ko Te Awa o Te Atua te awa, Ko Moutohorā te motu, Ko Te Rangihouhiri te hapū, Ko Tiaki Mahiti Wirihana or Wilson tāku papa, Ko Nina Estarina Bianca di Solma tāku mama, Ko Carin Wilson ahau.

JK: Kia ora. Where to start? You've had such an interesting career spanning 40-something years and you've done all sorts of really amazing things. But what I thought I'd start with is, how did you end up in this area of design, and craftsmanship, and art, and architecture, and all those things meshed together. Yeah, where did it all start?

CW: It started with questions about what's making sense. So my dad had, while he flew fighter aircrafts in the Pacific, he actually studied for a law degree when he got back from the war. And the conversation in my family from as early as I can remember was that I would study law. And I did. I went to Victoria, and Canterbury, and studied law for 3 years, got half a degree. But by the time I'd got that far down the path I just knew that it wasn't going to be a lifetime's commitment for me. I just couldn't. There's not enough creativity or, I couldn't measure the potential for creativity at that stage of my life. I possibly could have taken a different view if I was more mature.

But what I was looking for was a connection, and I can kind of describe that connection now as between the head, the hands and the heart. And I wasn't finding it in what I was discovering the use of law in our society. So, how do I go about this? There's no training, no formal training available. But, I couldn't resist the inquiry about understanding materials, and putting things together, and putting materials together, and it could have been anything at that stage. But I discovered this deep affinity and connection with timber, with the rakau, the wood. And that was the moment that it all changed for me. I discovered a material that I loved, I discovered that what lived in that material was what I would now call the mauri, because I understand what that means. But I certainly didn't at that time. It spoke to me, and it's quite weird but deep spiritual connection and I've always been interested in that dimension of our lives. So to go on exploring that, and see what came out of it, by working with the rakau, with the timber, and fashioning anything with it. Just as a way of engaging deeply with it, was the beginning of that journey.

JK: I think that's really beautiful, because even when we don't necessarily have the vocabulary or the framework to describe things, there are certain things that we understand on an intuitive level. And sometimes when you learn those things, it's kind of just like remembering things you've always known, rather than learning something new.

You were a leading figure in the crafts movement - what were some of the aims of that movement, and some of the achievements?

CW: I didn't even know that I belonged to any kind of movement. I was just doing what I was doing. It was this discovery path and I was completely absorbed in it and trying to be a father, and husband. So, my daughter Tully was 5 months old, I remember this really, really carefully, and I suddenly became aware of the fact, that here was a little life that I was partly responsible for, and, I'd better get my act together smartly, because otherwise I was going to screw up badly. So, I said to Jen look, this is something that I would really like to do. And she came back with three conditions, which was a really interesting response, and kind of set a really clear framework for us to move forward.

So I was able to make that commitment, and part of that commitment was a discovery path. I talked with anybody that I could find about what was going on for me. And one of the people that I met, was a woman named Vivienne Mountford, who was a weaver. And she told me about the way they - weavers - engage with materials. Like, the same thing that was happening for me. Wow. These people do it with wool, and all about that stuff if twisting the yarn, and feeling the tension and the spring in the yarn, and all of that sort of stuff. Wow, there's another bunch of people who are on a similar path, but with a different material. Then, I discovered who were working in clay, ceramics. Hmm, it's going on for them too. So, pretty soon I found that my first affinity was with people who were working in what we could loosely describe as a craft movement in New Zealand at that time. So, that was my whānau, my creative whānau association. I was hungry for understanding, and I was able to look at what they used as their design drivers, that's what I'd call it know. The way they respond to the material, the way the materials limit the level of flexibility or creativity that they can reply to what they want to do, and I started looking at, okay so there are limitations around timber, and I want to explore them as far as I can, to the absolute limit. So I've got to expand that conversation in whatever way I can. So talking with as many people who are working creatively in different fields became a really important part of my whole journey, oddyssey. And that's why I still love collaboration, because collaboration opens up the opportunity for that conversation to begin anew, in every new project. So I'm still doing it, I'm still doing something that I started forty years ago, and I still take delight in the process as much as it was an important part of my learning curve then.

JK: So what happened next, what happened after that?

CW: A big focus on education. Around about three or four years after I became closely involved in the whole question around education in New Zealand, and how well it contributed to the development of people like me. That's a big question. Well, where are the opportunities for learning in this area? I'm teaching myself, I'm talking to others who are helping me in that journey, but there's nothing formal.

By now I was the President of - what we called a President, you know, Chair, whatever - of the Crafts Council. And they heard the conversation about, we're not providing creative education opportunities for people. We're showing them how to do the rudimentary skills, what we would call today the trade skills, but we're not showing them how to be creative in that context. So, Alan Hyatt, who was the Minister for the Arts at the time, was married to an artist. And he just caught that conversation like that. Oh, of course. So, what he and the Arts Council made available to me, was the opportunity to go and look at what other countries were doing in this area. So I went to Sweden, and the United States, and Great Britain, in particular. Both sides of the United States, completely different on the East Coast to the West Coast. To look at the schools that they had working, the people that were leading those programmes, talking with those people, really just taking it to another level. And then coming back to the Minister and giving him a report suggesting how we might go about it here. And there's already like five years of work involved in that process. By the time we got all of the programmes underway in New Zealand through the polytechnic system and so on, we were into the 1990s. So, I'm not saying that I lost my own creative path during that time, but those were two things that were happening in parallel. And suddenly I was involved in a decision process rather than just being engaged in my own aspirations as a maker, there was something kind of structural about what we were doing.

JK: And I think that speaks to the kind of experiences of a lot of Māori designers and architects and creatives, as we might start wanting to create things, but seeing the structural barriers and the changes that are required at more of a systemic level, we necessarily become advocates, and educators, and all of these other things that are not strictly practice. And hopefully that creates the opportunities or the environment for more of that practice work to be able to happen.

CW: I haven't even begun to mention the Māori dimension of that. I can tell you one event which rocked me, and it just forced me to think, oh no, there's one dimension of this that I really haven't engaged with. And that is when the Crafts Council was meeting I asked Cliff Whiting to come to one of our meetings, so that I could have the other members of the Board engage with a Māori dimension. I was trying to bring that to them, but it's like, as the Chairperson it's like forcing the conversation. And, I felt it was important that I should just guide it, but let the other members of the Board learn through participation from somebody else. So I asked Cliff to come along, and talk to us. And I just remember so clearly, when we stopped for lunch on this day that the Board was meeting. And Cliff took me aside, and he said, listen Carin, I just really don't know how I can contribute to this. And it was like, oh my god, really, am I that far off the true understanding of where we need to take this, that I'm just not getting it? And, so, new learning curve, fast. Like, I've really got to stretch. I'm already at a stretch, but I've got to stretch even further to bring this dimension into our dialogue. So, in a way it was really helpful, it was challenge. This is how we work as Māori, isn't it? You put the wero out there, either you pick it up and run with or not. And I took it on, definitely.

I guess at that point there was a change in the potential of my engaging further with the Crafts Council. Because, so many of the Crafts that it was concerned with were from a Western European tradition. Whereas what I was seeing was the need to move it much more closely into a Pacific context. And where I found the strength to pursue that more deliberately, was with Te Māori, the exhibition. When that exhibition was mounted, and had such a massive impact, everywhere it went in the world, then the whole question of identity, and Aotearoa, and our place in Pacific, was resolved for me, like, in an instant. Like, I get it. This is where we fit.

JK: I've heard you talk before about this idea of us as not just tangata whenua, but tangata moana, and really acknowledging us as Pacific people, and our place and location in the Pacific. And I'm just wondering if you could talk a bit about that?

CW: I loved what I discovered through that process. Te Māori started me off, but then I realised that through the exhibits in Te Māori, I discovered the work of that period that we sort of characterised as a classic development phase in Māori art development. So, maybe the 14th and 15th centuries, where the crossover of the technologies and the engagement with materials, and the methodologies and so on, they come with us from the Pacific, to our Aotearoa, and then we'd started to adapt them to the work that was taking us to a relationship with other materials, from this land, rather than from the Pacific. I knew anything of any of those objects, until Te Māori. And then, Brian Brake's beautiful photographs. Discussion with him about what had taken him to the place where he was able to accurately represent them, photographically. The deep mauri and wairua of those works, and so on. He taught me a lot about the impact that it had made on his life, and enabled me to see it, or to see the works for what they were. And then to think about, wow, these are the product of a Pacific journey.

And the waka that brought us here were magnificent craft, the sailing skills, like I've sailed most of my life, the sailing skills were a comprehensive demonstration of the ability of our navigators, and deeply, deeply engaging with all of those questions around the craft that brought us here, how well built they were, how we guided them, how we were able to sail against the wind, rather than with the wind. So, if you can understand, from Polynesia across to South America, relatively easy because you're following currents and wind. From Polynesia to Aotearoa, it's a completely different. Because you have to sail more or less against the prevailing winds. And it really takes a great deal more skill, both in the navigation and in the boat handling skills. So, for me as somebody who loved sailing, there's an instant point of connection. I was able to dive in there further, and then through that came to the conversation which just blew me away. Oh, so the sea is not something to fear. This is quite complex but it's really interesting. When you're sailing on a waka, you're actually not worried about what the sea is going to do to the waka, because it's two hulls, and they have a technique whereby if things get a little bit rough, they drop the hulls into the water, so that the windage is reduced. They drop the sails, and the craft just sits there and it rides out the uncomfortable conditions. And then, when the weather's gone, they just bail it out, and put the sails back up again, and they carry on. So, there's this mastery of the elements, in managing the uncomfortable or the difficult conditions, understanding the tides, wave patterns, the way the birds are flying overhead, clouds in the sky, and the movement of the stars overhead. It's like a totally engaging relationship that the waka sailors formed with their environment.

So, Aotearoa has to be a part of that, because that skill set that got us here, so we should really stretch our investigation back. Let's not just talk about who we are, and possibly how we found our way here, but what are they still thinking over there? And so, Ra'iātea. Where we came from. Taputapuatea, that all important marae. I mean everybody who's been there talks about the sense of, oh I'm home. For us as urban Māori, I find that that's a difficult conversation to resist. The easiest way to follow the path of that conversation is to engage with it deeply, to want to go back, to see it as part of where we are now. It's this kind of invisible thread that tracks it's way all the way across the Pacific to there. And so those who've journeyed in the waka and who've gone back again, they'll just talk about, whoa. As we make our way through the gap in the reef, and they're all standing on the shore cheering and song, like it's actually really incredible. There's no way, as the people of Aotearoa, that we can engage the same way with anywhere else in the world. That one is just like, it happens from the heart.

JK: How do you engage with and honour our place as people of the Pacific through your work?

CW: It may be less visible in what comes out at the end, but it is the underlying proposition that is at the heart of what I do. I'm thinking about it all the time, I'm trying to improve my intellectual understanding of what it is, so, the study of that will never end. In whatever way I can, I'm thinking about the ocean plane as much as I'm thinking about the landform, and all of the mythologies and so on of Aotearoa. But maybe offer you the archetype of Maui, as a really important explanation of that. The mythologies are really super influential, we're behaving those mythological characters as if they were living. We don't know if there was actually a Maui, but we engage with the proposition as if there was. It's multi-dimensional, it's so supernatural that it couldn't be a single person, cause Maui did everything. And, to understand how we form our conversations, our internal conversations, and how we respond to our environment, and our whānau, hapū, iwi, and so on. They're all, in a way, embedded in the vision that we have in our own minds of those mythologies, and how they're working to shape what we do. So, I'm never far from it.

JK: So it's something that underpins everything you do, and informs your worldview and process, that then feeds into whatever the output ends up being.

CW: If we go back to the head, the hands and the heart again, that cycle of integration, for me it's an endless cycle. If my heart's not in it, then I'd probably better walk away from the project. If I can't handle it in my head, then I'd probably better not continue, cause I'm intellectually not capable of taking it any further. Those two, working in a kind of synchronicity, are what drives what comes out of my hands. So, I firmly believe that it's an integrating and integrated process, that when we hit it, it's like I'm no longer the agent of what's going on here, there's something else at work.

JK: You've talked quite a bit about technological innovation, and materiality, and I've seen some really cool examples of that in your built work, and I'm just wondering if you could talk a bit about that, in terms of the use of new technologies to carry forward ideas.

CW: Yeah, I can't resist it. You know, like, I had one of the first cell phones in New Zealand. I mean, I had a car phone for goodness sake, so to be mobile with the phone was like wow, this is incredible, I can actually have conversations while I'm driving. And then, the cell phone came out, wow, this is just going to be amazing. I've got one of those early, early Apple laptops, I can't bring myself to throw it away, because I just remember how excited I was at what I could do with stuff on this screen, this tiny little screen, about 200mm wide and about 150mm high, and this big clunky grey box. But it was like, oh, man, what a revolution this is. And part of the opportunity of it was that creatively, everything that I was doing I was able to record in one way or another without it having to be on paper. I could experiment. I could take more risks. Cause, drawing on it became just that little bit easier. I could forget about a drawing that wasn't working and just start a new one. And we can do that on paper, but somehow the materiality of working on static media is different from working in digital media. I'm not claiming that I'm good at it, but I love the fact that it just expands the horizons that much more than those horizons that had been available to me up until that time. So I've gone on, looking to understand new material technologies. I think it's a really interesting area to be able to work creatively in new materials, even though my first love will always be that relationship that I have with the timber, with the rakau. Other materials that perhaps mimic what I can do with it, or even enable me to take it a stage further are always going to be important. I think my work shows, the progression of my work, has shown an ability to deal with those new horizons. I can adapt. From rakau, to steel, from steel to glass, from glass to some of the other synthetic materials. They've all got their own attraction, and they all somehow fit into the bigger picture.

JK: You've also been quite involved and collaborated on numerous architectural projects, working with architects and other designers, and artists to deliver building projects. How did you first get involved in that kind of work, and how did that progress?

CW: Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on this, because I don't think about it a lot. I entered a competition that was floated by the Arts Council who were moving into new premises. They started a competition for the furniture for the new offices. And I put some designs forward for that. And, I was commissioned to create a boardroom table and chairs for these new offices. And it put me into a conversation with Ian Athfield, and Claire Athfield, from Athfield Architects, who were a couple. I mean that was their practice at that time, just the two of them I think. Because they'd designed the offices, I was now able to engage in a way, understanding what they'd done with the design, and seeing how I could fit the work that I'd produced to win the competition, to install it in this space. So, the dialogue has to go to another level, it's not just about making something, it's like, what is the fit, and is the fit in that space going to be successful. It gave me a clear understanding that there are two things going on here: there's my skills, there's the execution of my creative output, but there's also how it's going to work in the space that's been designed by somebody else. And you can imagine, if you will, working with the Athfields was probably the perfect opportunity, because their view was so expansive, so inclusive. They saw creativity as a truly multi-dimensional component of the design of space, and the integration of the work of others in the space that they've designed as the ultimate realisation of the opportunity of that space. Everybody's participating, even the people who come to use it are participating in something that will in this case inform the conversation. So, a board room, creativity going on around the boardroom, that whole lot of dynamics that then come into play. So, all of that I learnt just through dialogue with them, coffees, late nights over glasses of wine, and all of that fun stuff that happens along the way.

JK: I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about some recent projects. So the Waitangi Museum opened fairly recently - I forget exactly when - but I've been up there, and I've seen the wonderful precast panels in the black concrete, and I was just wondering if you talk a bit about your involvement in that project, and the process of producing that work?

CW: Well important to say, once again, that the collaboration is at the heart of what has come out at the other end. So, the conversations with Grant Harris, that began long before the project actually got underway.

JK: That's Grant Harris from Harris Butt Architecture, Project Architect for the new Waitangi Museum and Education Centre.

CW: So we're meeting and talking, and I'm talking him through tikanga and kawa, assuming these are things that are going to help to inform our design process, and how I would like the approach to be an ātea. Or for us to treat that approach as if it's an ātea. So that we're enabling, whenever the opportunity calls for it - pōwhiri, that whole. But even if people are just walking through the entrance and buying a ticket and then walking straight on into the building, I still want the sense of engagement in the formal sense that we as Māori think about it. You cross a threshold, and once you cross that threshold then you're in a sacred space. That sacred space is all about values, and important cultural processes that we would want people to at least get a sense of. There may not be a comprehensive engagement, it can't in a public space like that, but at least they can touch it. And, there's always the opportunity for the guides to explain to them what that sort of processional process that they're going through is sort of about, what it means to Māori. So, these are conversations that Grant and I were having about what we'd like to achieve, in the approaches to the building, and incidentally of course, having those conversations with the Waitangi Board representatives. So that collaboration begins well before all the formal design on paper is resolved. I just remember so clearly, one conversation where Grant and I were standing in front of the area and he's going, well, it's going to go there. And I'm looking at that and going, what do you you mean all of those trees have to come out? And he said, yeah. To make it fit, for the impact of the footprint of the building to be as benign as possible, we've got to nestle it into the hill. So, I just took my camera out right away and took photographs of those trees that were going to be removed, realising that an impact on the whenua like that, should be reflected in the design. It was just like, instant, instant recognition. We have to acknowledge that this is what we've disturbed to get to what we're going to put in place. So, my design just really started to evolve from there.

I mean the next thing was, so this is about the Treaty. What is it about the Treaty that we would want everybody who enters the space to understand. And to me, those seven key definitions that are in the Māori language version of the Treaty, should be understood by every visitor to the building. They're in the Māori language version because they have particular meaning and understanding in Māori, that can't really be readily translated into English. So, originally the design for the building called for less columns than the seven that we've erected at the entrance. But what Grant said was, well we can put seven in. So to extend it to seven, and then to create symbols for each of those values, became the next kind of layer in the development of the design. But, important to understand that this collaborative process for me is, I don't see it as persuasion, I see it as informing a deeper cultural understanding of what it is to be living here in Aotearoa, and to engage in as many levels as possible. In what are two quite distinct values systems, and philosophies. And to bring them, as far as possible, to bring them to merge together.

JK: I did want to ask one more thing about that project, and it was just a technical one about, were there any challenges with the fabrication, and how did that process work? Cause it seems like it might be kind of complex.

CW: Oh, it was complex. I'm just like totally at full stretch, I have to live and breathe it, and I'm wrestling with the integration of creative idea, and the limits of the technology, and it's not always easy, and we had a few... we had one panel, for example, where when we came to separate the panel from the mould, it just, we had to start again, because it just didn't work. But I can look back on it, and it was terrible at the time it happens, but it's all part of the growing kind of understanding of the limits of the technology, and how careful you have to be working with materials that are not all that human friendly, but with the end goal in sight, it's worth it. It's justified to generate the result that you're after.

JK: Correct me if I'm wrong, but was the process something like, CNC, kind of plywood, and then fibreglass, and then concrete, or what was the?

CW: Yeah, that's right. Pretty much they're the steps. CNC generations, and also generating layers. So what the engineers have told us, is that they can only give us 40mm to work with before the panel started to lose its strength. So, that narrative that I was producing, had to all take place within the depth of 40mm. So what we conceived, or what we contrived, is that, well every 10mm makes a difference, what we'll do is we'll generate four layers, so the CNC process enabled us to identify what went where in those four layers, and then to cut them all out, and then layer them all together, physically. So up until that moment, it's all digital, when the CNC gives the pieces to us, it's just like a collection of shapes. And then we have to start to layer them all up, and make them ready to take a fibreglass impression of them. It's a huge panel. It's like 4.8m tall and 2.4m wide. It's absolutely enormous, and we had eight of them going on at the same time. And then they go to the guys who essentially pour the concrete into the fibreglass panel.

JK: And how did they get the concrete that colour?

CW: They used dyes in the concrete. It's quite hard, you have to measure the dye into the concrete mix, and it's difficult to get uniformity in the colour. In fact, how we dealt with that uniformity issue, because from panel to panel it will change according to whether it's raining on the day. So many things to deal with. So in the end, what we did is we used like a glaze over the top of all of the panels, to create uniformity. So there's still this background colour in all of them, but where the background colour was variable, then the glaze enabled us to create a consistent colour across all of the panels. 21 panels I think.

JK: We've talked a bit about furniture and sculptural work, through to built building work and building integrated work. I'm just wondering if we could talk a bit about the urban realm and your thoughts and experiences working at that scale?

CW: Let me answer that question by saying I once thought about moving back to Whakatāne, which is where Ngāti Awa, our whenua, our tūrangawaewae is in that area, and for many years, since I started working on our Treaty claim and so on, I'd contemplated going back there. But it just became really clear to me when I started diving deeply into that conversation, that there's no way I could survive at what I'm doing from down there. Like issues around communication. My work happens in an urban realm. I'm really clear about that. I also really love my engagement with this modern urban world. So, I'm deeply engaged in my mātauranga development, and the understanding of what it is to be a Māori in modern day New Zealand, Aotearoa, but I can't really see that conversation moving at the pace that it does, if I isolate myself from our urban environment. And so, to me, it's really important to stay connected. You know, one building that we built down in Whakatāne, which is Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. It's a comprehensive urban statement, it's a beautiful facility, but it's probably one project that will happen in that city where a comprehensive Māori engagement is possible in a quarter of a century. Whereas, connection with urban growth and development, and what I see as a truly important need for our Māori identity to describe our urban spaces in Aotearoa, right now. I don't think I could have the same contribution to that conversation if it wasn't here.

JK: One final question, just to wrap it up, what has been a lovely and wonderful and inspiring discussion. So the theme of the podcast is Indigenous Urbanism, and I just wondered if you had any final thoughts or any other whakaaro on that topic that you'd like to share?

CW: What I would like to say, is that I think that our Māori conversation around kaitiakitanga, and those Te Aranga principles, which are about re-defining the cityscape, so that we're bringing our flora and fauna back, so that the buildings are reflecting a Māori sense of the environment. If I could just say this, I remember when we were working on the project at Te Puia in Rotorua, and we decided to take the walls out of one of the exhibition spaces, so that even though they have quite dramatic seasonal changes down there, so that a visitor at any time could experience the transition from the outside environment, which is all steam and sort of bubbling vents and so on, into the interior, but to make that as seamless as possible. And we're lucky we live in a temperate climate, where we should take advantage of that opportunity to limit the impact of the envelope of the building, and to create a landscaped context for the building so that we are experiencing that sort of direct integration of outside and inside. So, if we can have our urban environments transform in a way that the walls are no longer, we need that protective boundary any longer, we're not fighting off intruders, we're not having to protect ourselves against really wild changes in the climate, so we should be as expansive as possible in enabling that engagement to go on. So in the way that our domestic architecture has changed from villa like houses, with doors that only were about entry and exit, to villas being transformed to large French doors, or folding screens and so on that provide much more comprehensive engagement with the environment. So, this should be happening in our cityscapes as well. I'd like to see that change. And if we can attract the bird life, if we can acknowledge historic associations, like was there a spring running here? Was there a stream that's been buried underground? Were there people living on this site? Did we reclaim some of the harbour and bury the sea bed, and the life form living in that sea bed? How do we acknowledge all of those things? So, we are bringing it all to the attention of the users of the space. To somehow have design awaken the consciousness of the users of space, so there's not just like this casual, I'm going there, or, but we're seeing it a different way. We have to, because probably the survival of the planet now depends on it. If we don't increase that level of consciousness about our engagement, then we're just going to be indifferent to the gradual implosion of all of the systems, and we'll wipe ourselves out. It won't happen in my time, but it's likely to happen if we don't shake ourselves.

JK: And I suppose that's something that design can contribute is towards those sense of place relationships, they're all about promoting those better relationships with each other, but also with our environment. And if we have a closer, better relationship with our environment, and together as people, then we're more likely to take better care of it and each other.

CW: Absolutely

JK: You can find out more about Carin’s work at carinwilson.com.

Indigenous Urbanism is a production of Te Matapihi. Sandy Wakefield does our sound recording, editing, and mixing. Our theme was composed by Thomas Burton. I’m Jade Kake, your host and Executive Producer.

For more information about today’s show and other episodes of Indigenous Urbanism go to indigenousurbanism.net. You can drop us a line at [e-mail]. And if you like what you’re hearing, please give us a review or rating on iTunes.

Coming up next on Indigenous Urbanism, we look at how Māori designers are working alongside mana whenua, to re-shape the City to better reflect Tāmaki’s unique identity, and to create a distinctive sense of place that benefits us all.

Rau Hoskins: We've got this design aesthetic amongst our urban design and architecture community which favours the subtle. The ability for something which is too overt to become hackneyed, or too readily read, or simplistic. We're not asking for that. But we are asking for the test of legibility to be applied, and that test has to be applied from the lens of mana whenua. Can mana whenua see themselves in this environment?