Conversations on community building
This new podcast explores the ways in which indigenous communities are shaping their environment and “decolonising through design”.
Podcast host, Jade Kake, travels to several towns and cities across Aotearoa to speak with community drivers and design practitioners.
In Indigenous Urbanism, listeners can hear first-hand how housing and urbanism are fundamentally tied to wellbeing as a whole.
In a new podcast, host Jade Kake and her team travel Aotearoa highlighting members of the community and practitioners who are reclaiming, shaping and dreaming for the future of the spaces that their whānau inhabit.
Whenua. Papakāinga. Wharenui. These are just a few terms that Māori communities use to talk about housing and land. Yet, these words hold much more meaning to the Māori people – about connectivity, about community, about family.
Jade Kake, an activist for Māori housing issues and an architectural graduate, noticed a gap in the media when it came to talking about the issues facing indigenous people in an age of urbanism. This brought about the Indigenous Urbanism podcast. The weekly podcast takes on two main forms: the first is place-based conversations with community drivers in cities and towns across Aotearoa; the second is insights from Māori practitioners.
In the first episode, Jade travels to Mangakahia to visit the site of the Ngā Uri o Te Aurere Pou Whānau Trust papakāinga. Mangakahia Valley, located between Whangarei and Kaikohe is home to beautiful landscapes but also challenging economic times for its inhabitants. The Trust is ardently fighting to create a better future for their whānau and pushing for a resurgence of traditional ideals like guardianship, a collective mindset and communal living.
What makes Indigenous Urbanism unique is that although some design professionals are consulted, a strong focus is placed on key members of the community as well. Jade points out near the end of the first episode that without these community drivers’ dedication, many projects for the betterment of Māori communities simply would never materialise.
The podcast explores the technical elements of development, the practical measures Māori people are taking in the reclamation of their land and the ways in which urbanism is intrinsically linked to other social issues Māori face and with wellbeing as a whole. In the first episode, for example, guest Aroha Shelford discusses her struggle to get the New Zealand Building Code to recognize earth homes as a safe and valid construction option and also how healthy homes allow the whānau to help one another achieve their dreams.
The first three episodes are available now and you can listen to the Indigenous Urbanism podcast on any good platform including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Stitcher or on their website, indigenousurbanism.net. New episodes will come out weekly on Fridays at 8am. Indigenous Urbanism is a product of Te Matapihi.
