A wānanga series for uri o Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika

MARAMATAKA / TAIAO

One year - six wānanga

Over the course of 2025, Ahumai has been holding a series of bi-monthly maramataka wānanga for uri o Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika. These wānanga were part of a project looking to upskill uri in all things maramataka but with the focus on tirotiro and our taiao. With Ahumai leading various projects in the taiao, including cultural health monitoring of Kaiwharawhara, it was important to build our capacity as an iwi in maramataka with many of us spending more time monitoring our awa, whenua and moana.

Each wānanga has been held in a different part of Te Whanganui a Tara, starting on Matiu island, one of the harbour island owned by Taranaki Whānui. We have moved between marae and kura kaupapa providing opportunities at these wānanga to learn about the marae we are staying at, an old pā site that is close by, or the awa that passes by the marae. Alongside, our own mātauranga, we also invited external partners where appropriate to share about any taiao based projects they are working on in the area.

Our pou in this whole process is our maramataka rangatira, Erina Wehi-Barton. Erina came on board to be our expert, and to guide us through learnings. Through her, we have learnt different techniques of tirotiro, methods of recognizing the phase of the marama and most of all, how to find our feet individually to find ways that work for us.

Next steps

In 2026, we will move this project and our maramataka learnings from 2025, into the cultural health monitoring space of Kaiwharawhara awa. We will continue to build our capacity as a whānau but with more focused intention on freshwater systems and observations of our awa.