This paper emerges from a Marsden project, Let the River Speak, focused on the Waimatā River in Gisborne, bringing insights from mātauranga and wānanga together with a wide range of disciplines to produce innovative and engaged understandings of ki uta ki tai‐the life of rivers from the mountains to the sea. In Te Ao Māori, waterways are relational knots/nodes/strands in a meshwork of whakapapa that arises from exchanges betwe...

Te Awa o te Atua, known today as the Tarawera River, lies in the Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand. Despite its immense importance to iwi, it has been subject to intense anthropogenic pressures and modification over the past century. Ngāti Rangitihi, one iwi kaitiaki of the river, wanted to understand how the mauri of Te Awa o te Atua has been impacted, with the ultimate aim of revitalising the mauri. Drawing from mātau...