Te kai o te ngahere

There is an idea, still floating around, that Māori before contact were subsistence people scraping by. Anyone who has looked at what came out of the ngahere (forest) and the wetlands knows better. The land was a pantry, and it was managed.

Start with the birds. Kererū (wood pigeon), taken fat off the miro in autumn and preserved in their own fat in pōhā — bags made of bull kelp, packed inside tōtara (tall forest tree) bark and woven kete (basket), which kept meat edible for a year or more. Kākā, tūī (native honeyeater bird), weka (native woodhen). Tītī — muttonbird — still harvested today by Rakiura whānau under rights that have run continuously since before the Treaty, on a season and a quota worked out by the families themselves.

Then the water. Tuna, the eel, is a whole economy on its own: pā tuna built into rivers, hīnaki (eel trap) woven to size, the great heke when the eels run to sea on certain dark nights of the maramataka (Māori lunar calendar) and people who knew the calendar were waiting for them. Īnanga (whitebait). Kōura (crayfish). Kākahi, the freshwater mussel.

Then the plants. Aruhe, the fernroot, the staple. Pikopiko (young fern shoots). Kōkihi. Tī kōuka — the cabbage tree — whose root was dug, cooked in enormous umu (earth oven) tī for a day and a night, and turned into something sweet. Karaka berries, which are poisonous and were made safe by a long, careful process of cooking and soaking that someone had to work out and nobody could afford to get wrong. Hīnau berries ground into cakes. Tawa. Kiekie.

That is not scraping by. That is a food system, with preservation technology, seasonal timing and specialist knowledge.

And it was governed. This is the part worth carrying.

Rāhui (temporary prohibition on gathering) — closing an area for a period so it can recover. Applied to bird country, to shellfish beds, to eel runs.

Tapu on particular places and species, which functioned exactly as a protected area does now, but with a much better enforcement mechanism, because breaking it cost you your standing and your safety.

The first fruits — the first bird, the first fish, the first kūmara — returned to the atua rather than eaten. That is a tax on the harvest, paid to the system that produced it.

And take only what you can use. Not what you can carry, not what is there. What you will actually eat before it spoils.

Underneath all of it is kaitiakitanga (guardianship), which does not really mean conservation. Conservation implies you are outside the system, managing it. Kaitiakitanga is what you owe a relative. You are inside the whakapapa, and the forest is family, and you are the one whose turn it is to look after it.

So if you take anything from the bush or the water this year, take Haumia's rules with you.

Ask before you take, out loud if you can manage it. Take less than you are allowed to. Take from the middle of the patch, not the edge, and never all of it. Leave the biggest and the smallest. Put back what is not yours. Go home when you have enough, not when you have everything.

And here is the one that makes it stick: come back to the same place next year. Kaitiakitanga is only possible if you are in a long relationship with a particular patch of ground. One visit makes you a tourist. Twenty makes you someone that place can rely on.