Kia whakakorowai i a papatūānuku: An Indigenous conceptualisation of extreme weather events

The article adopts a novel pūkenga- based approach to develop a narrative of extreme weather events informed by Indigenous knowledge. Three key findings, identified from co-learning amongst Indigenous researchers and pūkenga, are seen as required to formally (re)generate knowledges- in-place. First, an understanding of causal factors reveals the collapse of local knowledge narratives and the need to renew these. Second, te ao Māori (TAM) framings progressively assembled from narratives by pūkenga centred on environment, community and wellbeing generate authentic, alternative, coherent and verifiable accounts of how local material and spiritual conditions relating to extreme weather events are seen from a TAM worldview. These accounts speak to how intergenerational, lived and remembered extreme weather events are codified in mātauranga- a-iwi. Third, reconceptualising extreme weather events from a TAM perspective produces relational knowledge with practical outcomes.