ONLINE MEETING 

10.30 am - noon NZDT

Desna Whaanga-Schollum Hon.FRAIC (Aotearoa) and Dr. Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu (Hawai’i) will be in conversation with Dr Michelle Maloney (Australia), one of the authors of the 2021 Declaration for the Rights of the Moon.

The hybrid session, grounded in tikanga and shared intent to build relationships between those assembled, follows a three-part structure: mihi mihi and whakawhanaungatanga (welcome and introductions), Takiwā (panel discussion), and Whakawhitiwhiti Kōrero (active exchange).

Desna Whaanga-Schollum Hon.FRAIC (Rongomaiwahine, Pāhauwera, Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu Matawhaiti ki Māhia) Taipōrutu, Te Māhia-mai-Tawhiti is a designer, artist, and cultural strategist. 

Currently resident in her iwi territories on Aotearoa’s East Coast, her leadership in Indigenous design and governance has been recognised with an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (2024). Under her stewardship, Ngā Aho, Māori Design Professionals Inc., has become a beacon of Indigenous empowerment and Place-based methodologies.

Drawing on whakapapa-based protocols and ecological ethics, Desna recentres Indigenous cosmologies of sentience and mauri / life-essence. Her 2024 film SentientPlace has featured in leading international forums on heritage, art, and space, including ACHS, ISEA, HOEA, Ars Electronica, and the International Astronautical Congress. Lead author of Perspectives on the Rights of the Moon from Oceania (IAC Milan, 2024), she continues to root the lunar conversation from Māhia and Aotearoa through Te Wānanga o Hina.

More about Desna →

Dr Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu (ʻo ia/she/her) is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Native Hawaiian, scholar of Critical Pacific and Indigenous Studies presently residing along the shores of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa-New Zealand and working as a lecturer at Vaʻaomanū Pasifika, Pacific Studies, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She is a global citizen with Indigenous, Moananuiākea genealogies to Molokaʻi Nui a Hina and Kanakaʻaukai from Kalapana, Hawaiʻi.

Her scholarship and creative practice engage moʻokūʻauhau, genealogical connections to the natural world, in an effort to raise global awareness about human and more-than-human relationships, Mana Wāhine, Indigenous and Pacific feminisms, epistemologies, and ontologies that inform critical, innovative and transformative futurities. Her research, curation, documentaries, animated films and visual art add to the growing body of knowledge expressed by Kānaka ʻŌiwi, Moana Nui, and Indigenous peoples working at the interface of social justice and environmental protection of our islands, earth, waterways, oceans, and the moon.

More about Nālani →

Dr Michelle Maloney (Australia, Irish Ancestry) is the Co-Founder and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA) and is recognised internationally for her work advocating for Earth centred law and governance, including the Rights of Nature. Michelle is a non-Indigenous person, descended from Irish people who came to Australia as part of the British colonisation of the continent. Michelle is a Director of Future Dreaming, an Indigenous led organisation that works to share Indigenous ecological and governance knowledge with non-Indigenous people and organisations in Australia.

Together with Dr Alice Gorman and Thomas Gooch (Australia) and Mari Margil (Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, USA), Michelle co-authored the 2021 Declaration for the Rights of the Moon, a foundational call to recognise the Moon as a being with inherent rights. The group’s work engages a legal and ethical foundation for recognising celestial bodies as entities within planetary systems of care.

More about Michelle →

VāHina

Director, Illustrator, Researcher: Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu (Molokaʻi Nui a Hina, Kanakaʻaukai, Kanaka ʻŌiwi)
Animator, Illustrator, Researcher: Tayla Hartemink (Ngai Tūhoe)
Soundscape: Laughton Kora (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Pūkeko)
Animator and Co-director: Mike Bridgman (Tonga)

Vā Hina is a voyage through time and space. The film describes the shapeshifting manifestations of ancestor Hina in a dreamscape story. We venture from Ma’ohi Nui, Ra’iātea, sailing through Te Ava a Hina to Molokai Nui a Hina. She sails to Aotearoa and in the latter phase of her life and shapeshifts to become Hina the great watch woman who resides in the moon and watches over travellers at night.

   

Suggested Reading for Saturday

•Whaanga-Schollum, D., Genevieve, K., & Salazar, J. F. Perspectives on the Rights of the Moon from Oceania. Initial work presented at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Milan, 2024.

•Maloney, M., Gorman, A., Gooch, T., & Margil, M. Declaration for the Rights of the Moon. Drafted by the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA), Brisbane, 2021.

• Wilson-Hokowhitu, Nālani (Ed.). The Past Before Us: Moʻokūʻauhau as Methodology. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019.