Building Indigenous Food Sovereignty with the Hua Parakore Organic Framework

Māori knowledge is an intergenerational knowledge form that's developed in place through intergenerational observation and connection with the land. And that connection with the land is really about being co-producers and co-creators with nature, so not above nature but actually being a part of nature. Kia ora, tēnā koutou. Ko Jessica Hutchings ahau, ko ai he uri o Ngāi Tahu me Ngāti Huirapa. Kei itahi atu taha no India, toku mama no Gujarati ia. Kei te noho ai kei konei, kei te tahi pāmu iti ko Papawhakaritorito. So I hail from the tribe of Ngāi Tahu down in the South Island, Te Waipounamu in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And on the other side I'm from Gujarat, India. Sometimes I'm known as a Mindian, a Māori Indian. And I live on a little whānau food farm, a little family food farm, just north of Wellington with my wife Jo, my dog Tahi, and my mum who lives in a little whare just over there in the house next door. So the Hua Parakore system was developed by Te Waka Kai Ora, the National Māori Organics Collective in Aotearoa. And it's the first indigenous verification system for certifying or verifying pure kai, organic kai, but using indigenous values, Māori principles and Māori understandings of how to produce natural food. So Hua literally means a product and Parakore literally means free from rubbish or harm. Toxic waste or chemicals. So hua parakore, you could understand it in English as organics, but for us, we're not using a Western model to try and come back to indigenous understanding. So it just is hua parakore, a framework now. And it's been picked up by Māori organic growers. Soil scientists, it's been picked up by cooks, by fermenters, so it's used kind of right across the food system as a way to bring indigenous values into kai. So the Hua Parakore sits within a Māori worldview, so we can actually use the Hua Parakore principles or values to help us think about what that worldview is. That worldview is interconnected, it's holistic, it doesn't privilege humans over nature. Something that's really important to understand about the Māori worldview is that it is a complete and valid way of living as Māori and of understanding the world. And one of the impacts of colonisation for indigenous peoples all over the world was that our knowledges were seen as primitive, as savage, as naive, as not worthy, as not scientific. We have hundreds of years of scientific knowledge as Māori through intergenerational observation and practices of gathering and collecting kaimoana or kai from the environment. So it's not a theoretical framing of the natural world for Māori, it's actually a lived reality for us and we're living it every day. The Hua Parakore differs from the other The current four organic verification schemes in New Zealand, because it's Māori, because it provides an indigenous pathway, kaupapa Māori pathway for Māori growers to tell a Māori story about their food production. And that is so important. The process for the hua parakore is kaupapa Māori driven so it's really relational and having been both certified organic with Organic Farm NZ and then also too being hua parakore verified, there's just stark differences in the processes between hua parakore and the other Western certification systems. And an example of that is in Western certification, In organic certification systems we have, I fill out paperwork. Send off an email, an auditor comes out, I might be a different auditor from year to year. It's on the farm for three or four hours. He or she's read the paperwork, and then we go for a walk around the farm and they're gone. But with the Hua Parakore, we're actually about building communities and building communities which are resilient, which are transformational. And so when this farm was... It's received its full Hua Parakore verification. We had a hui of about 60 to 70 people up here. It was really kind of like almost gaining collective consent. You know, we walked around the farm, we had people from the Māori organics group with us who asked questions in relation to the kaupapa. Then we had other Māori people there steeped in mātauranga Māori and te reo who were also too asking us questions. And so in lots of ways, it's a learning framework. We get to ask these questions and we get to respond. But then other people who have come to that hui or that final verification get to add their whakaaro or their thoughts as well. It takes a full three years to become Hua Parakore verified. And it's a community process. You know, we're bringing people along with us. We're strengthening our own knowledge systems. Building our own ways and understandings of how to be growers within our own cultural practices to tell our own kaupapa Māori stories in Aotearoa. Māori food sovereignty isn't something that we achieve as a one-off, it really is a way of life, it's about connecting with our food system, it's about understanding our food system, it's about activating our politics around the global food system and about demonstrating resistance, it's about engaging again with kind of diverse local economies so that we can restore and rebuild. food systems from which our tūpuna lived and from which we come from. So there's lots of layers to Māori food sovereignty. One, it's on that personal level of actually, you know, needing to decolonise our food system and our gut and the way that we approach food. But it's also too at a systems level within community, rebuilding our cultural landscapes. And then of course it's at that political level which is It's really important that we can activate at that political level. Māori knowledge systems and whakapapa is not about this very reductive understanding of the world where we shut things down and say, oh this is ours, this is ours, this is our way of knowing. The Hua Parakore framework and way of being is a healing way of being and so really we want to bring as many people into it as we can. Pākehā can support Māori food sovereignty by becoming really strong allies. And that's not just in food sovereignty, that's in ngā mea katoa, in everything. To become good treaty partners, to become tangata tiriti in Aotearoa, is a really important role for Pākehā to take. And if we think about Māori worldviews as being interconnective and inclusive, and the notion of whakapapa as moving out, you know, and bringing people in, that's really what we're wanting to do in the Hua Parakore. You know, we've got a vision for Aotearoa of having Hua Parakore farms and food producers all across the country connecting up and returning us back to eat our our cultural landscapes again. Hey everyone, thanks for watching our film about Hua Parakore. The interview with Jessica was so inspiring and packed full of information that we couldn't possibly fit it all into this film. So we've released her one hour interview up on our channel for you to check out. Link is in the description. So while we were researching the film we read two of Jessica's books which are a great resource for understanding the Hua Parakore framework better. Links to these are in the description So thanks again for watching and we'll see you all in the next film.