ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Deep Time: Mātauranga, Temporality, and the Geologies of Geothermal Things

• In Event: Plural Epistemologies and The Role of Time in the History of Waterscapes

English Abstract

The story of the geothermal springs of Waiwera in Aotearoa New Zealand follows the all too familiar pattern of settler reordering, including removal of indigenous peoples, landscape transformation, and resource destruction. Land confiscation, tourism, and therapeutic culture led to the destruction of ecosystems, water resources, and human-environment relationships. Unfortunately, this history can reinscribe this process of dispossession. Indeed, in the case of Waiwera, we risk permitting settler-epistemologies to continue to shape our understanding of the past, present, and future of geothermal resources. To unsettle the story of Waiwera’s geothermal ecosystems, the water, geomorphology, and energy that made Waiwera a site of Māori and Pakeha (settler) significance must be understood through Māori ontologies. Mātauranga (or the knowledge, culture, values, and world view of the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand) represents one of the most exciting bicultural scientific endeavors in the geosciences. Researchers push for new approaches to resource governance, access, and sustainability that challenge or supplement Western approaches to phenomenon like collapses of geothermal wells. These ontologies function as a vehicle for reconstructing how the history of Waiwera is told, thus joining critiques of settler-colonial histories through counter-narratives by deploying still-operative Māori ontologies to study an ongoing and contestable history. The past and ongoing erasure of Māori at Waiwera created an archival void. Those voices can begin to be restored by revising how we conceptualize geothermal “things,” specifically by unseating the primacy of Western definitions of “time” and “energy transfer” in the history of human interactions with subterranean hot water.

Author

• Nathan Narain Kapoor, Illinois State University