Local government engagement practices and Indigenous interventions: Learning to listen to Indigenous voices

This article examines the Maori consultation and engagement processes in a development project framed as climate adaptation and carried out by a local council that sought to expel Maori from ancestral land. Drawing on a dialogue between Kaupapa Maori (KM) theory and the culture-centered approach (CCA), land is centered as the basis for everyday meanings of health. We depict the processes of culture-centered organizing in co-creating voice infrastructures at the margins of the margins of the community, which serve as the spaces for voicing Indigenous knowledge to resist the modern-day confiscation of ancestral Maori land. The dialogue between KM theory and the CCA foregrounds communicative inequalities within community spaces, working with the concept margins of the margins to center Maori voices that have historically been silenced.

Automated summary

This article explores the consultation and engagement processes of Maori people in a development project that aims to displace them from their ancestral land. By integrating Kaupapa Maori theory and the culture-centered approach, the importance of land in defining health is highlighted. The study focuses on the culture-centered organizing in creating voice infrastructures at the margins of the community to amplify Indigenous knowledge and resist the seizure of Maori land. The dialogue between KM theory and the CCA brings attention to communicative inequalities and the need to center silenced Maori voices.