Te Raumahora features in Sheperdess Magazine alogside her Team Lead for Te Kāhui Rau

Click on link to read the full story featured in last summers edition.

Our Land and Water | A Movement in the Māra (shepherdess.co.nz)

Bry Kopu, 51, and Te Raumahora Hema, 39, find synergy in their love for te taiao, and for their tūrangawaewae – Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Together, Bry (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Mutunga) and Te Raumahora (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tama, Taranaki Tuturu, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngā Puhi) are working on Te Kāhui Rau, a movement shaped by dedication to research, revitalisation and regeneration of te taiao.

" Being urban hapū we have our own set of challenges, and taiao is at the centre of it. Our landscape looks completely different from our rural hapū; they’ve got full working marae and sometimes quite a bit of whenua and native ngāhere – whereas here in town, our landscape is changing all the time; it’s being built up. We’ve been dealing with a lot of challenges post-Treaty settlement – the mamae, the generational trauma, it really runs deep. A lot of our whenua here, we’re disconnected from it because it’s not in our ownership and now it looks like a massive city. For me, it’s painful to see that there’s less than ten per cent of native trees in our urban areas and the health of our awa and manga are in terrible condition – you can see the harm that’s been done to our whenua and, looking back over time, you can observe how drastically our landscapes have changed".

"The revitalisation of mātauranga Māori to help improve our wellbeing is my passion – all of those knowledge systems that have been lost to us. It’s a discipline of the sciences in essence, connecting people back and reconciling that relationship with their whenua and their natural environment is critical in improving the health of Papatūānuku".

Our Land and Water | A Movement in the Māra (shepherdess.co.nz)