Ngā roimata o Ranginui

The tears of Ranginui

TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE THREE | WHENUA

Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (she/they/ia) | Whakatōhea, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa | @uku_rangi  Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor

Concrete weeps. Steel remembers. Water carries the weight of what we’ve buried.

When rain falls in Tāmaki Makaurau, it carries the memory of wetlands drained, rivers forced underground, and land reshaped by colonial infrastructure. My recent artworks explore these relationships between wai, whenua, and tangata, asking how we might rethink the way our cities respond to flooding.

The moving image work Kei te heke ngā roimata o Ranginui explores the systemic causes and lived impacts of flood risk in Tāmaki Makaurau. The work investigates a site at the intersection of Dryden, Tutanekai, and Hakanoa Streets in Grey Lynn. This whenua once held several homes, but now remains an eerie void of the past. Where houses once stood, fragments of concrete driveways remain. A quiet symbol of lives that have since been displaced.

The work responds to the legacy of drained wetlands, colonial planning, and climate disruption, while the title references the phrase said while it's raining: the tears of Ranginui are falling – an expression of the grief felt between Ranginui and Papatūānuku. In this context, those tears grieve for the whenua altered and cut by colonial infrastructure, and for the communities affected by flooding.

The work asks a simple but urgent question: how can we shift from containing water to living with it?

A related sculptural work, Te Mauri o te Wai, responds to the ongoing impacts of the 2023 Auckland Anniversary floods and the failure of urban water infrastructure. Made from concrete, steel, rainwater, harakeke, and wool, the work explores how materials themselves hold memory, mauri, and agency.

As we carve our cities with concrete, the whenua loses its ability to breathe. Wetlands as natural infrastructure absorb, filter, and slow water. Once widespread across Aotearoa, around ninety percent of these wetlands have been destroyed. Their absence is deeply felt during extreme weather events.

Te Mauri o te Wai reverberates this loss while calling for the return of wetlands as living systems, referencing Auckland Council’s freshwater vision to protect and enhance Te Mauri o te Wai, the life-sustaining capacity of water. 

On January 27th, 2023, at the beginning of Auckland Anniversary weekend, Tāmaki Makaurau experienced an extreme rainfall event that caused catastrophic flooding across the region. Within hours, roads became rivers, homes filled with water, and critical infrastructure failed. Lives were lost, and thousands of people were displaced.

The event revealed the problems in how we design, value, and inhabit our cities. Between 2016 and 2023, the Auckland Council granted resource consent for more than 9,000 new dwellings on floodplains. These numbers do not include additional developments built on overflow paths and other flood-prone areas.

These patterns reveal a deeper issue in the relationship between urban development and the natural systems it replaces. Rather than working with water, our cities have long attempted to control it through pipes, drains, and concrete channels. As climate change accelerates, these systems are increasingly overwhelmed.

The importance of wetlands in stormwater management is reflected in the work of civil engineer Troy Brockbank. His research explores how mātauranga Māori can inform water-sensitive design that works with natural systems, using green infrastructure like wetlands to support existing stormwater drainage, protecting the mauri of a site, and reconnecting decision-makers back to water and the land.

In this context, artists also have a role to play. Creative practice can act as a bridge between communities, scientists, and policymakers. Through storytelling, material exploration, and visual language, artists can translate complex environmental challenges into experiences that build empathy and understanding.

Many families are still struggling with the aftermath. Some homes have been designated as Category Three properties, presenting an intolerable risk to life. Owners are offered a buy-out scheme, but the decision and the process are not simple. 

This raises an important question: what happens to land made uninhabitable by climate change? And what happens to the people who are connected to that land?

While these conversations are unfolding in Auckland, they reflect a wider issue facing various Māori communities across Aotearoa. Floodplains, river valleys, and coastal areas were historically important places of settlement. Many marae, urupā, and wāhi tapu are located in landscapes now increasingly vulnerable to flooding and erosion.

For Māori, leaving these places is more than just a decision. Whenua holds whakapapa. It holds memory, identity, and a direct connection to tūpuna. Relocation reflects a loss that is hard to leave behind.

In some places, urupā have already been partially washed away by erosion. Marae situated near rivers and streams face an ongoing flood risk. During recent extreme weather events, some communities were cut off from roads, power, and medical supplies. These climate events damage not only infrastructure, but also places central to spiritual and cultural wellbeing.

As each year passes, more communities face the possibility of displacement. Rural and lower socio-economic areas are often the most exposed and the least resourced to respond, highlighting the difficult reality of what happens when the whenua that holds our whakapapa becomes unsafe to live on.

Across Aotearoa, many Māori communities are already facing this question. As the climate shifts and the land changes, the challenge is not simply rebuilding infrastructure, but protecting the mauri of these places and the communities connected to them.

The tears of Ranginui will continue to fall. We must decide whether to learn to live with water and with the whenua before more is lost.