A new interactive map from Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission, challenges colonial ideas of land ownership.

Land is important. Our view of the world is shaped by the way we view land. Our legal system – what society defines as right and wrong – assumes that public and private places exist. In public spaces, there are stricter rules you need to follow than in private spaces. Want to indulge in a game of naked Cluedo while over-imbibing on Bacardi mojitos and smoking rollies? Knock yourself out, so long as you do it on your private land. However, it’s probably best not to try it in the middle of a public road.

The idea that land is completely private or public is not the only way to view the world, or even a logical way to view the world. It’s weird to think that individuals can own a piece of land they did not create, existed before they were born and will exist after they die. Not only is it weird but it’s also rather colonial.

Many tangata whenua view land ownership differently. As Te Puni Kōkiri describes, before the arrival of European settlers, Māori had collective kaitiakitanga for the whenua in their territory. No one person had ownership rights – everyone worked together to make the most of the whenua while ensuring its protection and sustainability for the future. In some cases, different hapū or whānau used the same piece of whenua for different purposes, for example, one group using it for fishing and another for growing food.

At Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission, we deal with both public and private land all the time. One of our roles is helping people gain public access to private land. We work from the colonial viewpoint of property and access rights. Land is either public or private. If land is public and has enduring public access, you have an irrefutable right to be allowed there. Most of the time, if the land is private and the landowner does not want you there, it is illegal for you to be there and the police can charge you with trespassing.

At Herenga ā Nuku, we devise extremely detailed maps that show layers of land ownership and its associated access rights. We use these maps to entrench and enforce our understanding of legal access and our understanding of right and wrong.

But this binary division between public and private falls apart when we view land through a Māori lens. Land becomes something that a local group of people can have mana whenua over, even though they do not legally own it. It becomes something that groups of people care for until they can pass it on to future generations rather than something that individuals own and trade. Land becomes something that people who live on it connect to through their unbroken history of ahi kā, rather than connections existing through legal title. 

Viewing land through a Māori lens also impacts our view of public access. If the land is neither fully public nor private but something that is cared for and governed by local people – in trust for future generations – then access is the same. Access is no longer a right, but a broader part of caring for and belonging to the land. 

There’s public land, private land and then Māori land, which represents a grey area in an otherwise black-and-white legal worldview. Depending on whether you whakapapa to that whenua, you may have a right to access. Coming across a map of Māori land as someone with Māori whakapapa may be an experience of learning or growing your awareness of the whenua and its interconnectedness between land and community. 

Likewise, if you are Pākehā, or don’t have any ahi kā relationship to that whenua, you can still better understand the mana whenua status of that land. Knowing the surrounding ahuwhenua blocks and the organisations or individuals who are kaitiaki of the land gives a more nuanced appreciation of a Māori worldview. 

Sometimes, access may not be appropriate because mana whenua and kaitiaki are protecting that land. An example of this is the rāhui over the Waitākere Forest. This rāhui is not about legal access rights but about caring for the whenua for future generations. 

Access may only be appropriate for some people, sometimes, under some conditions. For instance, it may be appropriate for the public to walk across whenua while avoiding wāhi tapu and giving space during significant cultural anniversaries. 

Just as we have maps that enforce and reinforce our British view of land, property, and access, we have also recently developed a tangata whenua map. This digital map shows tangata whenua-owned lands (ahuwhenua blocks) as well as marae and gazetted rohe moana that border the shoreline. It is also possible to view iwi areas of interest, as identified through treaty settlements. The information has been gathered from several publicly accessible map sources and placed on one single map. Having a map like this helps us all ask different questions when dealing with land access issues. 

When people enquire about land access, this map encourages us to note not just the legal owner of the land but also the longstanding mana whenua connections to it. It breaks our paradigm and asks us to consider, more broadly, communal bonds to the land. All New Zealanders gain from this, because viewing only maps that reflect just one view of land is like wearing spectacles with one broken lens. We can have a much richer and more nuanced discussion about public access to the outdoors if we have maps that show multiple ways to view the world.