Geoff Park 'Ngā Uruora - Groves of Life - ecology & history in a New Zealand landscape'

Intro

p.18
"With no evidence of the forest's trees, ferns, birds, there can be none of those signals from the wild that might one day predispose their inhabitants to walk more lightly on this part of the planet."

p.19
"... what V.S. Naipul calls 'the wiped out, complete past below one's feet'; the truths, often unpleasant, about ourselves and our attitudes and perceptions that the landscape divulges along with its native ecology."

Chapter One 'The Immense Trees of Ooahaouragee'

p. 39
"What was a tapu, food-rich labyrinth of waterways, forest and swamp to the river people was a vacant wilderness to the men on Endeavour's boats."

p. 40
"Land, apparently waste is highly valued by them," William Swainson said years later in 1859. "They claim and exercise ownership over the whole surface of the country, and there is no part of it, however lonely, of which they do not know the owners. Forests in the wildest part of the country have their claimants... Forests are preserved for birds; swamps and streams for eel-weirs and fisheries. Trees, rocks and stones are used to define the well-known boundaries."

Powerful description of a people looking after, and valuing their own land.

 

More to come as I read..