Mana Wāhine Declaration for Hineahuone 

Māori women’s declaration for Soil and Seed 

Hineahuone sculpted from the red soils of Papatūānuku at Kurawaka. 
Hineahuone alive with ancient mana and mauri. 
Hineahuone origin of our human whakapapa to Earth. 
E kore au e ngaro he kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea 
For I am not lost, I am a seed broadcast from the sacred homelands of Rangiātea

Te take | Intention

Resistance to late-stage capitalist patriarchy and the imperative for restoration of our soils and seeds are at the heart of this declaration. It is an urgent call by Indigenous women to return to ways of listening to, and being in inter-relationship with, Hineahuone (Soil Deity) and Papatūānuku (Mother Earth). 

Although Indigenous Peoples (living on their lands) make up only 6 percent of the global population, we care for 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. This means we are uniquely placed to create a renewed future – one based on the thriving biodiversity that is rising in the wake of the fall of modernity.

As Indigenous Peoples, we are a human expression of the land and therefore, natural leaders in how to live in balance with nature. The devastated conditions of our soils and seeds means there is no choice but to return to this wisdom. To fulfil our obligations to the natural world that provides the conditions of life for us all.

This declaration sets out how we are swiftly moving away from capitalist patriarchy’s addiction to expansionism and extraction from nature to a radical interdependency that comes when we trust in the self-regenerating powers of Mother Earth. 

We call on all people to resist agri-colonialism and return to the fundamental truth held by the world’s Indigenous Peoples, and by Indigenous women – we humans are of the Earth, just as seeds are of the soil. To survive these grave times, we must honour nature’s laws, to create a flourishing biodiverse world that can sustain us now, and for many more generations to come.

We call on all people to resist agri-colonialism and return to the fundamental truth held by the world’s Indigenous Peoples, and by Indigenous women – we humans are of the Earth, just as seeds are of the soil.

Mahia te mahi | Actions 

• We demand that soil and seed be honoured as the heart of biodiversity and our commons. This would allow Indigenous and local food and farming systems to flourish, leaving behind global capitalist food systems as the dominant pathway for feeding people.

• We say no to the extractive logic of capitalist patriarchy, the chemical poisoning of Papatūānuku and Hineahuone, patents on lifeforms, GMOs and reductive, mechanistic worldviews that create a false separateness between humans and nature.

• We are outraged that governments and corporations still seek unfettered growth, and colonial states continue to negotiate international treaties to advance corporate power and profit, at the expense of Papatūānuku and her descendants.

• We are listening to Papatūānuku, and call for an urgent return to balance between humans and nature. 

• We advocate for the mana (authority) and mauri (lifeforce) of the soil and seed to be elevated and call out practices that degrade the soil food web and patents on seeds.

• We call on people, movements and governments across the world to reinvigorate our reciprocal relationship with Papatūānuku and to generate healing grounds and food farms that grow soil and build living-seed communities. 

Introduction

Driven by the superiority complex of imperialism and patriarchal capitalism, the last 600 years have seen great violence erupt from western Europe and extend across the lands, waters and people of Earth. We can feel Earth’s response quicken as her very seasons and life cycles yield and transform. Like a virus, late-stage capitalism seeks to maintain dominance, advancing its assault into the genetics of life, seed, and soil. 

By contrast, for generations, Indigenous Peoples have been the human expression of the land, making us natural leaders in how to live in balance with the land. Alongside small-scale local farmers and peasant communities, we have worked closely with nature to maintain and enhance the cultural and biological diversity held in living soils and seeds. Through consistently practicing how to observe and respond to the laws of nature, we know exactly what to do. 

This is why amplifying Indigenous ways of knowing and doing is so critical at this time to ensure that living biodiversity, thriving mauri-rich food and communities and locally held seed systems remain pure.

For generations, Indigenous Peoples have been the human expression of the land, making us natural leaders in how to live in balance with the land.

Following the original instructions of our tupuna (ancestors) and the call of the land, this declaration grew from He Whenua Rongo, an Indigenous seed, soil and food sovereignty symposium held in Aotearoa in 2024. Over three days, Indigenous women’s voices, lived experience and practices of being close to the Earth, soil and seed led the conversation. As Donna Kerridge, a traditional healer, reminded us at this event: 

“Our role is to elevate and restore the mana and the mauri of people and place. […] Mauri is the gift of being alive, it starts at the time of conception and leaves us at the time of death. Mauri is the glue between the physical and spiritual world. Caring for the mauri of all things needs to be our priority.”

Ngā Kaupapa | Guiding Principles 

Two fundamental laws of nature serve as guiding principles for our resistance and restoration; these are the Indigenous Māori concepts of Mauri and Whakapapa:

Mauri – Mauri is the essence of life, it is the life force and the energy that binds healthy ecosystems together. It brings the vitality of life to seeds and every aspect of our interconnected living systems. Caring for the mauri of all things and maintaining access to the things that keep us well needs to be our priority.

Whakapapa – Soil and seeds are part of our whakapapa (genealogical) relationships that begin with Ranginui (Sky Deity), Papatūānuku (Earth Deity) and Hiineahuone (Soil Deity). We need to renew our whakapapa connections to nature and fulfil our obligations as mokopuna (grandchildren) to the natural world. 

Moana Jackson reminds us of the importance of whakapapa and Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the horizons we should set our sights towards when thinking about social transformation: 

“[An ethic of restoration] derived from the lessons in the stories of the land about the potential to whaka-tika, or to make right even the most egregious wrong, and to then whaka-papa, or build new relationships. To adapt it as a tool to create non-colonising relationships is to rekindle faith in the ‘ought to be’ in this land; to draw upon the same land and tikanga-centered way of ordering society that was envisaged in Te Tiriti.”

A tikanga approach to soil and seeds flows from the understanding that food is our rongoā (medicine), and that the act of growing, harvesting and distributing food is also our rongoā. A pathway to bring us back to understanding ourselves as nature, as interconnected and as part of a larger whole. We have a duty of care and responsibility to soils and seeds to uplift and enhance their mauri (life force), as well as the mauri of the food they produce, the natural systems from which food comes and the mauri of the people who receive this food. It is our job as the teina (the youngest of Ranginui and Papatūānuku’s children) to care for all that came before us.

We have a duty of care and responsibility to soils and seeds to uplift and enhance their mauri (life force), as well as the mauri of the food they produce, the natural systems from which food comes and the mauri of the people who receive this food.

Crucial Considerations

1. Ceasing the financialisation and destruction of nature 

The shift from nature as a commons to nature as a commodity has wreaked havoc on the creative powers of our regenerative life systems. The monetisation of nature is based on a false notion of human superiority over the land and waters. One where man-made currencies entitle the few to own entire open plains or hill-tops, to control and poison the waterways and to exclude the many from accessing them. This ideology is the foundation of capitalist patriarchy, which upholds and celebrates the extraction of resources from nature as a mark of success in modern society.

One of the growing expressions of this ideology is agricultural colonisation. While Aotearoa may have once had the opportunity to be a secure bastion of living soils, locally held seeds and safe food during a time of global climate catastrophe, instead, government policies and international agreements have created settings where:

• Aotearoa exports more than 90% of the food that is produced from our lands and waters, shipping food grown from our soils offshore and importing nutritionally empty food commodities from global markets and foreign soils
• For the first time in 30 years, there may be an introduction of increasingly advanced genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into our food supply – actions protected by international trade agreements
• Corporate control of patents on life forms and the environmental impacts of industrialised food systems dominate the development of ‘food without farmers and farms’ and is the new edge of a technologically advanced war on nature. 

Each of these so-called advancements destroy and deny the mauri (lifeforce) and mana (authority) held in the powers of nature. This is not the path for a thriving abundant future but one of exploitation and destruction by its own hand. As Dr Jessica Hutchings reminded us at He Whenua Rongo:

“The power of composting late-stage capitalism brings light to the new possibilities of what can emerge when death oversees the parts of capitalism that life can no longer tolerate”. 

2. Removing capitalist patriarchy by powering up nature’s abundance 

Late-stage capitalism is in its violent death throes and the pain is shared by all of life. The immense size of the chaos is disheartening, but it is precisely the heart of Mother Earth that we must protect. By resisting a dying system, we create an opportunity to re-connect to nature’s rhythms. By maintaining radical belief and helping foster the emergence of balanced systems between humans and nature, we will once again thrive. 

This is best achieved by remembering that we are nature. We work as nature does, in patterns and rhythms, starting like a seed grounded in our places then radiating in relationship with each other. A radical interdependency will form when we trust in the self-regenerating powers of nature. 

We are nature. We work as nature does… starting as a seed grounded in our places then radiating in relationship with each other. 

This declaration is an urgent call to return to the ways of listening to, and being with, Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) and to foster the emergence of the wellbeing and healing that comes from honouring the creative abundant energies of soil and seed. We acknowledge Earth’s creative, self-regenerating and life-giving capacities. We assert our responsibilities as human beings to be in a restorative relationship with Mother Earth and to power up nature’s abundance. Our job is to ensure that nature thrives beyond our lifetime in abundant diversity for future generations. 

3. Critiquing the rights of nature and personhood approaches 

At He Whenua Rongo, Annette Sykes reminded us that the constitutional framework Aotearoa is built upon was developed by our tupuna Māori (Māori ancestors), in close connection to Papatūānuku. She encouraged us to “build movements based on the values that cement and create our co-existence together, as tangata (people) and whenua (land)”.

The rights-of-nature movement, and the use of innovative tools such as legal personhood, can give standing to living soils, seeds and waters in systems of law around the world. This places obstacles in the path of expansionist agendas. Meanwhile, protections for Indigenous Peoples’ responsibilities and rights in international treaties, especially trade and investment agreements designed to advance capitalist exploitation, may carve out some safe enclaves. Yet there are risks inherent in these concepts of rights, protections and personhood. This is because they arise from the world of finance and the original tools of capitalist expansion. 

Meanwhile, protections for Indigenous Peoples’ responsibilities and rights in international treaties, especially trade and investment agreements designed to advance capitalist exploitation, may carve out some safe enclaves.

To actively engage with them, we must remember the intention is not to ascribe human-made rights to nature or to bring Earth’s cosmic complexity down to person-size. ​​Instead, the purpose is to ensure humans take responsibility for our actions towards nature. Declaring nature’s rights or personhood, and securing protections, are only useful if they create a shield within western law, holding back the modern world’s extractivism and allowing us a protected space to carry out the real work of rekindling the laws of the land and returning to our true place of inter-relationship with Hineahuone and Papatūānuku.

Kupu whakamutunga | Conclusion

By loving and nourishing the natural systems we come from and to ensure future generations (both tangata and whenua) have all that they need to be in interconnected relation with one another, we must intensify our collective aspiration and responsibilities for restoring our relationship with nature. We must stand in our mana, knowing we are doing everything possible to ensure we are each entitled to enough to be well, no more no less. 

Let us join together to assert our right to come back and listen to Papatūānuku (Mother Earth), Hineahuone (Soil Deity) and all atua (deity) and to move towards life-generating, diverse local economies that support soil, seed, community and the natural systems that sustain us.