The river corridor is probably the largest area of managed retreat in an urban centre worldwide. How can our experience inform processes of managed retreat elsewhere? The question is central to this project, which has developed a model of ‘retreat’, ‘relocation’ and ‘re-imagining’. Re-imagining asks how can the land be re-used for projects that further lower environmental and social risks.
Teoti Jardine
Teoti Jardine, formerly Takata Tiaki and Chair, Avon Ōtākaro Network
Teoti Jardine, Ngāi Tahu, was the Māori liaison person on the Avon Ōtākaro Network board until he left Ōtautahi/Christchurch in 2018. He keeps in touch with AvON’s activities but now lives in Riverton/Aparima, where he is involved in the activities of the Ōraka-Aparima Rūnaka and with various Rainbow for Seniors roles. Originally from the Queenstown area, he spent two decades overseas before returning to the South Island. He moved to Ōtautahi shortly after the earthquake of 4 September 2010.
Ko Aoraki tōku mouka, Ko Waitaki toku awa, Ko Uruao, Ko Araiteuru, Ko Takitimu ōku waka. Ko Waitaha, Ko Kāti Māmoe, Kō Kai Tahu ōku Iwi. Kō Kāti Huirapa, Kō Kāti Irakehu ōku Hapu.
Ko Arowhenua, Ko Takutai o te Tītī ōku Marae. Ko Teoti Jardine tōku ikoa, no Aparima.
Karakia Timataka.
How did you get involved with the red zone?
I became involved with the Avon Ōtākaro Network through my friendship with Evan Smith. Someone had left their committee and he invited me to come along and sit in. I think there was a six week’s trial where then the committee would say, yes, he's one of us or no, he's not. I wondered how that was going work out, but I liked the people. However, on my second meeting, I said, wouldn't it be nice if we started with and closed with karakia? Everyone was quite happy to do that. So that was it. And it kind of made me the Māori liaison person. I became involved and was enthusiastic.
I was also sitting on the Canterbury-Aoraki Conservation Board at the time, and I'd been involved with conservation things, so to me this was another project with the land. And the land had become almost like an enemy to us. And when Evan had decided we were going to have this celebration - I don't think it was Matariki, but it was a celebration where he brought lots of people to come and do some planting - he invited me to write a poem. And I'm thinking I'll write this poem because it'll be my contribution to the celebration. And then when the Mahika Kai Exemplar project was unveiled, there was my poem that he'd sneakily stuck there. I will read it now.
Re-zoned
empty breezes wander
streets where the windows
of silent houses gaze
without any expectations
there was no time
for farewells only
the hurried leavings come
quickly don't turn back
nothing is left here now
yet around abandoned
playgrounds children's laughter
lingers making an invitation
to come, plant, grow, picnic
forage among the stories of
those who stayed growing
swimming singing roosting
through sunshine rains and mist
filling the breezes with hope
(printed in Leaving the Red Zone. Poems from the Canterbury Earthquakes, edited by James Norcliffe and Joanna Preston, Clerestory Press, Christchurch 2016, p. 133)
And that occasion of the planting and celebration was people doing the planting, getting in touch with the earth again. And Evan was so intuitive about that. He knew what it was to get people whose lives had been upset by the earthquakes and by the earth, how we get them to get in touch with the earth again. And it was wonderful. People came from Tuahiwi, lots of kids were planting. It was a wonderful, wonderful celebration. And then, and for me, doing that work in the red zone connected me to, awakened in me, the connection of my tupuna, my Waitaha people, and the Kāti Māmoe and Kāi Tahu, for whom of course this land was a mahika kai, this was a food gathering resource.
We would talk about what this red zone needs to look like. For me it was all about ensuring that these memories of the land are retold. The stories of the tribes gathering kai, those memories of the people of the Waitaha-Kāti Māmoe-Kāi Tahu tribes, also the recent memories of those people. Our people were moved from the land as the settlers arrived, so we lost the land. We were the first ones who became disinherited from the land and now the earthquakes had come and these other people had lost the land too. For me our old tribal stories should remind people of this, of how this is our connection with the land and for these recent arrivals who had to move, that their stories need to be recognized too.
That was my sense of whatever happens in the red zone, those stories need to be remembered. And we would often take people on walks through the red zone, and it was always a time when I would feel tearful. I even feel tearful talking about it now, those journeys through that empty space. That extraordinary sight of where the houses and gardens had been: the imprint of those more recent dwellers was still there, and it was quite
extraordinary that we were able to visit this place. That was one of the things that I was really nourished by, through my connection with the Avon Ōtākaro Network.
I became, or was given, the role of Takata Tiaki and became the chair of the executive committee. Those were the things that I was taking care of and in the short time that I was in Ōtautahi, how quickly those plants that were placed around the Anzac Drive site, by the playground that the Council had given us to first work on, how those plants had flourished. So yes, my connection with Avon Ōtākaro was one of being nourished and being able to nourish. That was basically how I felt about that experience.
So you become involved fairly early on in AvON's existence?
Yes. This might have been 2013 or 14. It’s around that time when the Mahika Kai Exemplar got underway. By that time the shakes had stopped. We hadn't had that many earthquakes anymore. And what I loved about the way Evan worked with people was to ensure that their voices would be heard because there was a whole lot of voices from bureaucracy that were being quite loud. Evan was asking how about the people whose homes had to be abandoned, how about us old tribal people whose voices have been lost? It was the people especially who were the focus when he and Peter Beck set up that Eastern Vision work, gathering all that information. I forget what we called that project. We would go and give talks and people would feedback in interaction with us.
And the poem that I've read. I've never had a poem that's been heard so many times. When Evan was giving a submission to the City Council, I would come along with him, and he would invite me to make an opening karakia. He'd make a submission, I'd make a closing karakia. And Evan would say, ‘Now Teoti is going to recite his poem. This one, from Leaving the Red Zone’. And when we finished it once, Lianne Dalziel [the Mayor at the time] said, ‘You bugger, you've made me cry. I'm going to get my audio people to give me a copy’. And Evan said, ‘You're not going to take it off our presentation?’ And she said, ‘No, I want a private copy. You bugger, you've made me cry’. Because she had to move [from her home in Bexley]. She knew about that business. So that made us feel good.
Were you living in the red zone or near the red zone at the time?
No, I was living out in Oxford when the first earthquake came in September 2010 and then moved into Christchurch at end of October. I was working at Burwood Hospital with the Māori support service Ranga Hauora when the next one, the big one came in February 2011, I was with a group of Māori friends who had all been involved in Social Services one way or another. And we'd all done training with Paraire Huata in his Te Ngāru Wānaka. We'd get together for peer supervision once a month and we were meeting downtown at the STOP Offices, on Montreal Street. We used to meet there, and we'd go uptown to have our lunch. This day we're having such a good kōrero we decided we'd stay there and who knows what would have happened if we’d gone into town as usual. And not only that, but part of our kōrero at this particular hui, Ivy Churchill, who was part of our team, she had set up Purapura Whetu, the Māori mental health service, and she was telling us and showed us photographs of some of the Takatawhai Ora who had been taught by a carver over in Lyttelton and did this wonderful carving. Guess what the carving was? Rūaumoko, the atua of earthquakes. So, we've just been looking at this wonderful carving when Rūaumoko reminded us that he's still here,
How did your involvement with Avon develop? What sorts of things were you involved in apart from the Mahika Kai Exemplar?
I did become a kind of Māori liaison, and I know there was some difficulty, and I need to talk about calling it the Mahika Kai Exemplar, using the Kāi Tahu dialect. Mahika kai for us, our tribe, was a source of real pain, because in Kemp’s Deed it was never properly recognized. And we moved around gathering kai. So mahika kai was part of our tribal traditions. And for a group not having any Māori connection, it was already called the Mahika Kai Exemplar when I arrived, which made it difficult. The relationship between Ngāi Tūāhuriri as mana whenua was always strained. And I think that strain was around the name. Not having asked mana whenua, can we use the name? Because mana whenua would have said, no, you must call it something else. Because the mahika kai kaupapa for Kāi Tahu is a real sore point.
And also, I should have been more wary about taking a role that called myself Takata Tiaki, because basically that translates as the person who's doing the caring, the conservation, the taking care of. However, in our tribe, Takata Tiaki is the person in the local iwi who you'll go to ask for a customary take of gathering food. So those were a couple of things that were difficult. We never really got a good relationship with mana whenua and there was no other Māori joining the group either. However, having said that, there were some wonderful connections with the river. I became connected with the EOS Ecology whānau when we did the Inaka survey. That was a wonderful project that I really enjoyed being part of. And getting to see the excitement and my own excitement when we lift up those places and see the eggs of the Inaka and the kids coming along to see it. All that was wonderful stuff. And it was that business of healing us and healing the land at the same time, healing our connection with the land. And I think I would have missed all of that had I not connected with the Avon Ōtākaro Network.
For me, that's been a really important part of my life and I have fond memories about all of that and the enthusiasm that Evan had that was quite infectious. He would pick this up, he'd see what needed to happen and next minute we're all involved in going for it. He had a wonderful eye, a wonderful sense of what was needed and his brother mentioned that at his funeral and how that was manifest in the family but also manifest in his role with the community. Yes, that's what I would like to say.
Picture of a Christmas gift Evan Smith put together for Teoti. It shows Arowhenua Whare, Te Hapa o Niu Tireni and the whare at Koukourata, Tūtehuarewa. He has whakapapa links to both these marae. Aoraki is in the background.
Where do you see the future of the red zone and what do you think we’ve learned from the experience of red zoning?
From what I hear living down here, from Hayley [Guglietta] and from different connections that I have with groups that are now well established now, but were just becoming established when I was living there, it feels to me as if bureaucracy has snuck in and I don't know that the voices of the people are being heard as clearly as they were. There was a place that we wanted to become the wetland again, that business of how do we ensure that the wetland is keeping the Avon, the Ōtākaro River healthy? I believe these issues are being addressed.
Living here in the Southland, where they've taken almost all the wonderful wetlands that were here, and drained them: that's been a tradition. Now the people who have little farming groups, have set up their own catchment areas. That's what they do, restoring the wetlands. setting up their own catchment areas. It is quite strong. I became involved as the Ōraka-Aparima
Holding the pūkāea that was carved by Dallas Matoe and given to Evan Smith at the end of the first Meet In the Middle event in the red zone. Evan wanted Teoti to have it when he died, to go to his son Jason in turn. He is still learning how to play it.
Rūnaka Representative with the Cawthron Institute’s Catchment Forum Project. They chose four rivers around the around the Motu, including the Pourakino here. I became connected with the Pourakino Catchment Group, a group of farmers who were doing amazing work that we never heard anything about. All we hear about is the angry farmers who want to carry on like they always did. But here's a group really doing good things.
As soon as you ask how the red zone might end up, you know, I see lungs and filtering. If they can do lungs and kidneys, basically, that's what it is. And that's the opportunity. The area should never have been built on. I remember when I was with Yvette Couch talking about this. She said, when our people come over the hill, we looked down and we thought, ‘Yay! Kai!’ When the settlers come over the hill, they're going to drain it and build. You know, two different attitudes.
How can the red zone remind us, remind people of what not to do? How can this be an example of what didn't need to have happened because things just weren’t thought through? My whole time of living in Ōtātahi, because I lived right through all those earthquakes, and then being caught up with this through Evan, and with the Avon Ōtākaro Network, connected with the healing of it and the healing of us. That still goes on, you know? I'm lying down having my siesta a few weeks ago, and I thought, gosh, Amie my dog's doing some strong scratching out here. Then I realized it was the beginning of an earthquake coming. And I did exactly what we used to do up there, not hide and cover or do that turtle stuff you're supposed to do. But I'm lying there, as we all got in the habit of doing, wondering how strong this was going to be. Then I'd decide what to do.
The other night we had a power outage. I had everything that I knew I needed, because I'm used to that from living through all those earthquakes. People phone, oh, are you all right, Teoti? I said, yes, I'm used to that from living through all those earthquakes. I've got food that I don't have to cook, I've got water in bottles, and I've also got candles and torch exactly where I need them. That's made me think about what the earthquakes taught me, to be ready for it.
Thank you, Eric, for coming to visit and thank you for doing this. I think it's important that some of this is gathered up because of how quickly we can forget, and I think part of what we've been given to experience is important for other people to remember too. Even though I know how pissed off we all got with being called resilient. Don't call us resilient. And even Kia Kaha wore thin, because we're just doing it. I remember someone studying how you train people ready for these extraordinary things to happen. But you do what you do when it happens. And basically, that's what we learned: we can do this as it happens. That's where the learning comes.
There could be a tsunami where I'm living now. If a tsunami comes, I've got to be up at the racecourse. In fact, I made the blessing for a Kāi Tahu container, one of the emergency pods that are placed all around the 18 Kai Tahu marae now. The racecourse is on the high ground before we drop down into Riverton. These things, I think, have come out of the earthquake experience. Let’s do this. Let's not play catch up. We know what we need if something happens. The earthquake, Rūaumoko, taught us that. Our marae Takutai o te Tītī is right on the shoreline so we decided the racecourse is where it's going to be. Kāi Tahu was clear this is for the community, we're not going to keep it to ourselves. These are things for emergencies.
Kia ora.
Interview with Eric Pawson in Riverton/Aparima, I June 2025
Transcribed with Cockatoo