Harina Rupapera is seen on the right middle with the black ‘pono’ t-shirt and the Atuianga ki te Tango group in Rarotonga
A biosecurity officer for Te Arawa iwi, Harina Rupapera, has recently returned from Rarotonga to learn how to revitalise the environment through a Māori lens.
Rupapera says that her sole motivation for travelling to Rarotonga came from wanting to explore her genealogy.
"This is a means for me and my whānau to reconnect with our whanaunga, understand our similarities and learn how they protect their environment.”
She says the main focus in Rarotonga was to control the population of taramea, also known as crown of thorns.
“We went out on waka and learned how to extract taramea to ensure the populations are controlled to ensure they don’t reproduce too fast and become highly destructive to coral reefs.”
Sharing knowledge between indigenous cultures.
She says although extracting taramea is important to sustain coral reefs, the people of Rarotonga have struggled to control the species previously and now have started to focus on controlling their environment through an indigenous lens.
“My dream is to follow with what they do in Rarotonga and bring similar concepts to control and protect the environment in Te Arawa.”
She says one day she hopes to be able to take a group of Te Arawa youth to Rarotonga, give them the opportunity to learn and understand their techniques and hopefully return hope with more helping hands to protect Te Arawa land.
