Abstract

In New Zealand there is ongoing tension between how indigenous Mäori people and non-Mäori New Zealanders speak about the ways that they occupy their space on the landscape. The ways that different groups identify their relationships with the landscape often confl ict rather than complement each other, which has consequences for overall resource and environmental management plans. Using an environmental literacy framework, that is, how people ‘read,’ ‘see,’ and understand their relationships with the landscape, this paper will focus on the way that distinct groups use their own languages to explain how they, in the fullest sense, know themselves to occupy it. This paper acknowledges that it is a “given” that there are a number of theorists who associate the importance of language in defi ning the landscape, and the infl uence that language has on peoples’ perceptions of what it is that they are perceiving. However, this paper comes from a body of knowledge that legitimates the Mäori world views and understandings as a valid process of knowing the world. More specifi cally, contemporary Mäori theorists have developed a Matauranga Mäori [Mäori knowledge] framework, which stems from a tradition-based value system. Therefore this paper seeks to apply this knowledge base to the conceptual framework of how Aotearoa/New Zealand geography is viewed and understood through different cultural lenses.