Living Indigenous Heritage: Planning for Maori Food Gardens in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Indigenous peoples always struggle to ensure planning practice is culturally inclusive in identifying and protecting heritage structures and sites. Planners struggle to understand the cultural and spiritual values inherent in heritage and to develop appropriate ways to protect what is often an intangible cultural heritage (ICH). Using traditional Maori food gardens as an example of ICH and a kaupapa Maori research methodology, this paper explores how plans and planners in New Zealand can better recognise and protect Maori cultural heritage, of the type represented in the ICH heritage of food gardens.