New website connects people and marae
For immediate release
New website www.maorimaps.com connects people and marae
Te Potiki National Trust this morning officially launched the Māori Maps website, www.maorimaps.com
The site
dynamically delivers maps, photographs and information about
the tribal marae of Te Tai Tokerau/Northland and
Tāmaki/Auckland.
It provides a portal to over 170
marae through the North.
www.maorimaps.com is the
first stage of a long-term project to revitalise links
between marae, descendants and visitors.
Navigating
via an interactive map or quick searches, users can easily
locate a marae, get directions, see photos from the gateway
and access key information.
The site launch
represents five years’ work to establish the venture,
attract support and research around the North.
Paul
Tapsell and Rereata Makiha founded Te Potiki National Trust
in 2006 with the aim of reconnecting young urban Māori –
the ‘potiki’ generation – to their home communities
and elders.
Marae are the beneficiaries of work by
the Māori Maps team.
Tapsell, now professor of Māori
Studies at the University of Otago, led the research across
the North, accompanied by photographer Krzysztof Pfeiffer,
kaumātua Renata Tane, and Rereata Makiha.
“Our marae are places where issues have been
resolved for generations. They are central to our identity,
which is grounded in ancestral landscapes.
“In
recent times our potiki – the young generation – have
been growing up away from marae, and as our elders die, our
rich traditions, dialects and practices are dying with
them.
“The Māori Maps team hopes to be the
beginning of a solution, providing a pathway to marae that
will benefit all New Zealand.
“It seeks to create a
sustainable response to a real crisis: reconnection of new
generations of Māori to their tribal identity, and
sustaining our marae.”
The site fills a need for a
portal that allows easy connection to marae at no cost to
iwi, hapū or whānau, and will allow them access to store
images and records online.
“We are committed to
ongoing contact with runanga (tribal boards) and marae to
keep the content and website features up to date,” Tapsell
said.
Māori Maps has been funded by the Tindall
Foundation, FoRST and the ASB Community Trust, with support
from the universities of Auckland (James Henare Māori
Research Centre, and Business School via Icehouse/SPARK and
Otago (Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous
Studies), and Chapman Tripp.
The Māori Maps team is
planning its next field research in Bay of Plenty, Otago,
Southland and Waikato.
Further features are under
development for the site, not least a Te Reo Māori version,
iPad and iPhone compatibility, and a layer of mapping of all
marae in each runanga and iwi grouping.
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