Ka ara ake te akoranga i tewhenua: climate action and history teaching in Aotearoa, New Zealand

The climate crisis demands new approaches to education. One way teachers can respond is by making different choices about what and how we teach. In this talk, Michael Harcourt and Haimana Hirini present a project from Taitā College, a secondary school in Te Awakairangi, New Zealand, that integrated mātauranga (Indigenous Māori knowledge) with critical, place-based historical thinking.

This project unfolded in three parts. First, they selected a learning context – Wairarapa Moana, New Zealand’s third-largest lake – that illustrates how colonisation has altered local ecologies and how Indigenous communities resist such changes. Second, they organised a field trip to the lake with tribal custodians, reinforcing and expanding students’ learning through direct engagement with the land and its history. Finally – or more accurately, underpinning these two – some students consolidated their learning through Te Ahi Kaa, a school-based restoration of a swamp behind Taitā College that fosters Māori ways of thinking and being.

Through these activities, students developed a profound connection to the land and became active agents of change. This project highlights how integrating Indigenous knowledge and critical historical thinking can empower young people to respond to global challenges while grounding them in their local contexts.

Michael Harcourt is a history teacher at Te Aho o te Kura Pounamu. Descended from the first British settlers to arrive in Aotearoa on a New Zealand Company ship, he has a particular interest in environmental history and its implications for curriculum in a settler society.

Haimana Hirini is tangata whenua of Aotearoa and has Irish Catholic, Welsh and French ancestry. He has been part of Te Ataarangi, a Māori Language revitalisation initiative for 46 years which is also an appropriate response to the inevitable climate catastrophe. He is a teacher at Taitā College.

This event is organised by Teach Climate History. To find out more about Teach Climate History, please visit www.teachclimate.co.uk