Nona Taute: the quest to protect a geothermal taonga

Nona Taute (Te Ārawa, Tainui) grew up in Rotorua, a city where steam rises from the earth and the scent of sulphur lingers in the air. For generations, his whānau have lived alongside these geothermal features, long used by Māori for bathing, cooking, healing, and other cultural practices.

In the 1960s, part of his koro’s land, which stretches down towards Lake Rotorua, was taken under a Public Works Act to build Rotorua Airport. The geothermal pools that once lined the lakeside were buried.

"It was not only the loss of my own family’s land, but the loss of what was once a geothermal taonga (treasured resource) for the Iwi and hapū," says Taute.

"Under the Act, the government was allowed to take land without asking. They consulted with the landowners, but it wasn’t so much asking – it was telling us, ‘This is what we’re doing.'"

More than 60 years later, that whānau experience sowed the seed for Taute’s doctoral thesis, which aims to empower Māori knowledge in decision-making around geothermal developments in Aotearoa.

His research focuses on the Taupō Volcanic Zone, stretching from Maketū in the Bay of Plenty to Mount Tongariro. This is the most concentrated geothermal region in Aotearoa and a place of deep significance in Te Ārawa and Ngāti Tūwharetoa oral histories, with stories of ancient gods travelling underground, breaking the crust and releasing fire to the waters trapped below.

Taute describes his work as a decision support tool – a bridge between technical and non-technical worlds so iwi and hapū can have a seat at the table.

"If we want Iwi members to meaningfully contribute to decision-making, they’re never gonna be able to do that if engineers have given them all this technical jargon about extraction rates, pollution quantities," he says.

"What this [research] does is make non-technical people feel like experts, because they’re getting this information in a way that they can meaningfully interpret for themselves, come up with their own opinions and concerns, and those things are translated back to the engineers or clients to hopefully implement them into design and management systems."

In practice, his model lays out cultural, social, environmental and economic sustainability indicators that measure the mauri (life force) of a project.

"It’s expected the cultural indicators would be verified, interpreted and measured by the Iwi, whereas environmental indicators might be measured by scientists and engineering consultants, and social indicators might be measured by community stakeholders," Taute explains.

The cultural measures are further broken down into three Māori knowledge domains: wairuatanga (spirituality), Māori political aspirations (cultural identity, politics, iwi governance, tino rangatiratanga, Iwi relevance in the management sphere), and customary uses (the ability of iwi to use geothermal resources for bathing, cooking, healing or cultural practices).

"The idea is that you get all the right people in the room to interpret and measure all the indicators, and thresholds convert an indicator measure to a level of mauri ... you can track the sustainability of the project by aggregating all these mauri scores or levels to see how it’s tracking throughout the project and beyond," he says.

On 9 September, Taute graduated from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, with a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering – capping a decade-long academic journey that began when he moved to Auckland for undergraduate study in 2014.

After completing one year of full-time doctoral study, Taute was invited to teach. Since then, his path has been anything but linear.

"I’ve been teaching for the past five years and studying part-time, which of course just exploded the timeline for this PhD. It’s taken about seven years," he says.

Alongside study and teaching, Taute is a dad to a young son and deeply involved in waka ama, both at the University and beyond. He has represented Waipapa Taumata Rau at the Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race in Hawaii several times, co-founded the University’s Waka Ama Sports Club in 2020, and has coached ever since.

"I’ve been involved with the University’s sport and recreation, helping them coach the team, kind of regardless of which team is going to Hawaii. The last few years it’s been engineering, that’s just how it’s played out, that engineering has been the best, so I’ve managed to stay close to home," he says.

As part of his research, Taute has also produced a short film entirely in te reo Māori - an educational resource for children to learn about Māori beliefs and historical context around geothermal resources, the importance of geothermal sustainability for hapū, and the potential future for hapū associated with geothermal resources.

The film has been screened at kura outreach programmes, research presentations and within hapū communities.

"My hope is that this research will enable Iwi and hapū to more effectively communicate their values and concerns and see them meaningfully reflected in future outcomes," he says.