Vision Mātauranga

Goal: Landcare Research is invited into strategic partnerships with iwi and Māori organisations to address Māori needs, issues and aspirations.

Context

Māori are looking to science and innovation to enable them to meet their aspirations, realise business opportunities, and achieve sustainable management of natural assets.

Landcare Research is committed to increasing its integration of science and mātauranga Māori across all four of our National Outcomes. We have a number of projects with Māori to address specific cultural issues (e.g. cultural harvesting of native species, management of water and wetlands), visualising opportunities for development, building capacity for responding to resource management issues, and exploring governance mechanisms that meet Māori aspirations for managing their land assets. These projects build on our 20-year history of working in partnership with various iwi.

We are committed to building the bicultural capability of our staff, including those visiting from overseas, and developing a strong bicultural ethos to ensure staff understand and appreciate the cultural context, dynamics, and environment when engaging and working with Māori communities. We provide Te Reo tuition, tikanga sessions and Treaty of Waitangi workshops at our larger sites.

KPI

During the year, we engaged in 23 strategic partnerships in which we are linking science and matauranga Māori in projects with iwi and Māori organisations and which address Māori goals and aspirations. Most of these are mature relationships built over many years through multiple projects and interactions.