Ko au te taiao: Curriculum links

Ko au te taiao touches on a wide range of learning areas – Social sciences, including Aotearoa New Zealand histories, sciences, the visual arts, drama, health and PE, technology, and English.

The tables below suggest possible ways that Ko au te taiao develops understanding, knowledge, and practices for ākonga across the Social Sciences learning area in Te Mātaiaho and other key learning areas in the New Zealand Curriculum.

The tables are designed as a starting point from which teaching and learning in your own setting can be planned. Your focus on any part of any learning area could easily be more in-depth, depending on your learners’ needs and your school’s context.

 

EXPLORE – What is our connection to te taiao?

Explore the web of life that connects across time and space through pūrakau whakapapa and art.

A charcoal drawing or painting of the sideview of a maori woman with a baby overlaid in the position it would be if she was pregnant.

Te Pō and Papatūānuku, 1983, by Robyn Kahukiwa. Purchased 1983 with New Zealand Lottery Board funds. Te Papa (1983-0020-1)

Big ideas

  • Whakapapa is far more than genealogy. It is a type of cosmology that connects the human and more than human world together in an interconnected web.
  • Whakapapa has developed from a deep observation of te taiao.
  • Within mātauranga Māori, atua are all around us every day, manifested within te taiao.
  • Pūrākau teach us ways to interact with te taiao in ways that respect atua.
  • Concepts like whakapapa bring us back into the web of life, rather than seeing ourselves as separate to it.
  • Whakapapa shows us that relationships extend across history and space and that relationships from the past inform the present.
  • Whakapapa ‘cosmoscapes’ provide a mindmap of an ecosystem and so differ from place to place among hapū and iwi.

Go to EXPLORE – What are our connections to te taiao?

Download EXPLORE – What is our connection to te taiao - Curriculum links (285.14 KB)

 

EXPLORE – How do we live in harmony with te taiao?

Indigenous knowledges provide signposts for the future.

Herbal mixture II, 2001, by Areta Wilkinson. Te Papa (2001-0039-1)

Big ideas

  • Mātauranga Māori has developed through a practised relationship with the land here in Aotearoa.

  • Mātauranga Māori is not something that can be read about, and understood,  as it is knowledge that develops from practice.

  • The vitality of hapū and iwi is reliant on a deep, woven understanding of the environment.

  • Mātauranga Māori and te reo Māori differ widely around the motu as they reflect the hapū and iwi relationship to whenua and te taiao.

  • Mātauranga Māori recognises the integrated and interdependent position of human beings in the web of life. 

  • Tangata whenua have a connection to the land as kaitiaki that is enduring and permanent.

Go to EXPLORE – How do we live in harmony with te taiao?

Download the pdf of curriculum links for this inquiry question.

Download the curriculum links for How do we live in harmony with te taiao – Curriculum links (993.22 KB)

 

EXPLORE – What is the current state of te taiao?

Investigate how colonisation, and its values, has influenced present day relationships with landscape.

Big ideas

  • Colonisation, and its associated values, has severely impacted on the health of te taiao.

  • Understanding the whakapapa of the whenua where we live helps us to provide appropriate support for the taiao going forward.

  • Critically examining our past and present realities helps us to imagine thriving shared futures.

  • Museums can have a role in reconnecting people to their histories for thriving shared futures.

Go to EXPLORE – What is the current state of te taiao?

Download the curriculum links for What is the current state of te taiao – Curriculum links (140.45 KB)

 

EXPLORE – How is te taiao reflected in toi Māori?

Ponder the ways toi Māori reflects an entwined relationship with the environment.


Kauae Raro Commission (detail), 2023, by Kauae Raro Research Collective. Te Papa

Big ideas

  • The influence of te taiao on toi Māori is extensive, interwoven, permanent and reciprocal
  • Place-based art traditions reflect the ecosystem that surrounds hapū and iwi Māori.
  • Toi Māori is integrated into daily living. It has practical and aesthetic functions that contribute to supporting collective life
  • Toi Māori motivates us to look deeper into our relationships with te taiao through creativity, connection and collaboration.
  • Contemporary toi Māori continues to develop and grow as a powerful tool advocating for the vitality of te taiao.

Go to EXPLOREHow is te taiao reflected in toi Māori?

Download the curriculum links for How is te taiao reflected in toi Māori? – Curriculum links (602.49 KB)

 

CREATE – Who are our ancestors and what are their stories?

Let’s develop understanding of where our ancestors came from.

Whakapapa, 2021, by Stevei Houkamau. Purchased 2021. Te Papa (ME024669)

Big ideas

  • We have all inherited genetic resilience and strengths from those that have gone before us.

  • In mātauranga Māori, oral traditions passed through whakapapa, sustain the tikanga for a thriving taiao.

  • Understanding where your ancestors came from is an important step to help understand your connectedness to te taiao

  • Knowing who your ancestors are helps us to understand our, relationship to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Aotearoa

  • Every culture has a visual language associated with it - a tradition of arts, symbols, abstraction, and colour that reflected who they were as people, and their relationship to the land.

  • Those that have gone before us, and those that will come next are with us, in a spiral across time.

Go to CREATE – Who are our ancestors and what are their stories?

Download the curriculum links for Who are our ancestors and what are their stories? – Curriculum links (511.90 KB)

 

CREATE – How do we tune into the environment?

Grow your own living relationship with the taiao that surrounds you.

A piece of shell has a sharp piece of greenstone tied onto it with cord making it a fishhook.

Pā Kahawai (trolling lure), date and maker unknown. Purchased 1968. Te Papa (ME011848)

Big ideas

  • An active, practising relationship with the natural world around us helps us to understand its inherent role in our shared wellbeing
  • Spending time in te taiao also helps us to feel more content, grounded and connected
  • Mauri is the life-supporting capacity of an ecosystem, and where atua can thrive, te taiao can too
  • Connecting with nature is an important part of remembering we belong inside the wider ecosystem.
  • Colonisation has impacted on food sovereignty.
  • Returning to whenua and connecting with sustaining food landscapes is part of the decolonisation journey and impacts positively on the vitality of te taiao.

Go to CREATE – How do we tune into the environment?

Download the curriculum links for How do we tune into the environment? – Curriculum links (185.80 KB)

 

CREATE – What does a better world look like?

Imagining a thriving Aotearoa.

A black card with lines of white writing on it that says

Hat pin card, 2022, by Tame Iti, Te Mira collective. Purchased 2022. Te Papa (GH026279/2)

Big ideas

  • The uarā that underpin a thriving relationship with te taiao - wairua, whakapapa, kaitiakitanga, mauri, mana, aroha and rangatiratanga provide anchor points for thriving relationships between people too.
  • Environmental justice is social justice. Relationships to te taiao are at the heart of Māori justice issues in Aotearoa.
  • The decline, or improvement, of natural ecosystems is reflected in societal wellbeing and can be seen in the health of te reo Māori.
  • The creative arts can help us to communicate big ideas that excite our imagination about what the future can look like.

Go to CREATE – What does a better world look like?

Download the curriculum links for How do we tune into the environment? – Curriculum links (280.24 KB)