Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

I remember being nervous when I flew into Atyrau, Kazakhstan. Before boarding the flight, one of the business managers who organized the trip sent me a message with precise instructions on how to navigate the local airport:

Once you land, get into the bus on the right side of the driver. This side opens to the terminal. Pass through immigration, pick up your luggage, and go through Customs. The flight crew will pass out white migration cards. Fill them out, and keep it with your passport. You will need to carry these documents on you at all times once you’ve landed.

Another coworker, who had flown in the night before, warned us not to worry if we found ourselves in jail. Don’t panic if you find yourself in jail. Give me a call and we’ll bail you out. Maybe she was joking.

The flight itself was uncanny. I was flying in from Frankfurt, but it felt a lot like a local American flight to somewhere in the Midwest. The plane was filled with middle-aged American businessmen equipped with black Lenovo laptops and baseball caps. The man next to me wore a cowboy-esque leather jacket over a blue-collared business shirt.

After I landed in Atyrau’s single-gate airport, I located my driver, who was holding a card with my name on it. He swiftly led me into a seven-seater Mercedes van and drove me to my hotel, one of the only hotels in the city. Everyone from the flight also seemed to stay there. The drive was short. The city was overwhelmingly gray. Most of it was visibly poor. The hotel was an oasis of wealth.

Across from the hotel was another one of these oases: a gated community with beige bungalows. This was presumably where the expats who worked for Chevron lived. There was a Burger King and a KFC within walking distance. Everyone spoke a bit of English.

Security was taken extremely seriously. Each time we entered one of Chevron’s offices, our passports were checked, our bags were inspected, and our bodies were patted down. Video cameras were mounted on the ceilings of the hallways and conference rooms. We were instructed to travel only using Chevron’s fleet of taxis, which were wired up with cameras and mics.

All of this — Atyrau’s extreme security measures and the steady flow of American businesspeople — comes from the fact that the city is home to Kazakhstan’s biggest and most important oil extraction project. In 1993, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation opened its borders to foreign investment. Kazakhstan’s state-owned energy company agreed to partner with Chevron in a joint venture to extract oil.

The project was named Tengizchevroil, or TCO for short, and it was granted an exclusive forty-year right to the Tengiz oil field near Atyrau. Tengiz carries roughly 26 billion barrels of oil, making it one of the largest fields in the world. Chevron has poured money into the joint venture with the goal of using new technology to increase oil production at the site. And I, a Microsoft engineer, was sent there to help. 

Despite the climate crisis that our planet faces, Big Oil is doubling down on fossil fuels. At over 30 billion barrels of crude oil a year, production has never been higher. Now, with the help of tech companies like Microsoft, oil companies are using cutting-edge technology to produce even more. 

The collaboration between Big Tech and Big Oil might seem counterintuitive. Culturally, who could be further apart? Moreover, many tech companies portray themselves as leaders in corporate sustainability. They try to out-do each other in their support for green initiatives. But in reality, Big Tech and Big Oil are closely linked, and only getting closer. 

The foundation of their partnership is the cloud. Cloud computing, like many of today’s online subscription services, is a way for companies to rent servers, as opposed to purchasing them. (This model is more specifically called the public cloud.) It’s like choosing to rent a movie on iTunes for $2.99 instead of buying the DVD for $14.99. In the old days, a company would have to run its website from a server that it bought and maintained itself. By using the cloud, that same company can outsource its infrastructure needs to a cloud provider. 

The market is dominated by Amazon’s cloud computing wing, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now makes up more than half of all of Amazon’s operating income. AWS has grown fast: in 2014, its revenue was $4.6 billion; in 2019, it is set to surpass $36 billion. So many companies run on AWS that when one of its most popular services went down briefly in 2017, it felt like the entire internet stopped working. 

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

A promise is something that is put forward. It involves intent and expectation. It is a performative speech act: an utterance that, hopefully, does what it says. A promise is fulfilled when an intended future, now become past, finally aligns with the present. That’s when the speech act meets its condition of felicity.

What kind of promise (from now on simply “the Promise”) does design education involve? Does that relate to the present of education or to the future of work? What are the forces that shape it? How is it fulfilled and by whom? Who has the authority to sanction its fulfillment? Let us consider educational promises in general. First, they are not unilateral but reciprocal. It is not just the promisor, namely the school organization, in cooperation with or in opposition to the market and society, that is supposed to fulfill it (“We’ll give you knowledge, skills and a space to develop them”), but the individual promisee as well, the student, as they guarantee effort and participation (“I’ll make it worthwhile”).

Things get easily complicated because the Promise is not unambiguously formulated—there is no clear contract—and yet it looms over the promisee, functioning both as encouragement and threat. It can be rooted in notions like success, career, self-realization, ambition, autonomy… But, it can also aim at redefining them. It is affected by geography, class, race and gender. It comes in multiple shapes and forms and yet it can be understood as a whole. Does the Promise resemble a vow, an oath, a resolution, a mission? Is it as nebulous and frail as the American dream? In the design field things get even more complicated, as the field itself is in perennial reconfiguration: it experiences a constant identity crisis, some might say, fueling the personal identity crisis of practitioners.

To focus on the Promise means bridging preexisting societal conditions—such as employability, welfare, housing availability, discrimination, mobility, privilege—with socialized professional and personal aspirations—lifestyle, institutional roles, legacies of crafts, research trends, urgent matters, subcultures, notions of virtuosity… In other words, the Promise is built on some premises, at once materialistic and idealistic. When there is no full alignment between a promise and its premises, the promisee feels like they are compromising. From this a question arises: who is defaulting when the Promise is not fulfilled? And what can be claimed as compensation?

Recognizing the Promise means foregrounding intimate confessions, atmospheric peer pressures, individual anguishes, tacit dissatisfactions, concrete limitations, but also creating hacks, finding new paths, imagining different ways of living and working. It means reflecting on the design field’s linguistic tics and automatisms (such as working “at the intersection of”) in order to forge new vocabularies and approaches. It means designing new alignments of personal goals, collective aspirations and societal conditions.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.

Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even refer to ourselves as ‘tangata whenua’— ‘tangata’ meaning people and ‘whenua’ meaning land as well as placenta — physically situating our bodies as being of the land. When we re- call our pepeha, a traditional introduction, we present ourselves as long dead ancestors, as a river or ocean and as a mountain. ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au’ (I am the land and the land is me), to quote an ancient proverb. This is our ontology of the world, one where land and people are one and the same — and it differs dramatically from a Western ontology where the Cartesian split separates the immaterial from the material, the natural from the built and the human from the non-human.

Where Western societies tend to derive meaning from the world in developmental terms, centring linear time and its progression (for good or ill) in their account of the world, Indigenous ontologies tend to place land at the centre of their understandings. This distinction between the West’s prioritisation of time and Indigenous people’s prioritisation of place emphasises, first, Indigenous people’s attachment to their land, and second, their ontological framework for understanding relationships. We understand each other through our respective relationships to land. My Aunty Tai, for example, would recount stories about her great-grandfather as though he were alive, like a mountain still standing or a river in flow. This is another way of saying that a Maaori ontology rejects the Cartesian split — there is no distinction between the human and non-human — and instead we understand our place in the world through our relationship to Papatuuaanuku, the earth, and Ranginui, the sky.

This is why colonisation is more than ‘land loss’ for Maaori — it’s a loss of our entire being. This relationship between land and people isn’t something you can categorise or place within monetary value systems and so you can never adequately compensate for its loss. If you take our land, you take a part of us. No compensation or ‘settlement’ can rightfully restore the mana of this land. No monetary value can be placed on it. This is why we are anti-Treaty of Waitangi ‘settlements’. Our bodies’ karanga tell in chants the stories of our migration, our ontological relationship to the Pacific and the land, and to our ancestors who held the land, cared for it and had it taken from them.

New Zealand was the last major landmass on Earth that humans settled. The first European to discover ‘New Zealand’ was Dutch ‘explorer’ Abel Tasman in 1642, the former Dutch East India Company captain exploring the vast Pacific in search of either ‘Terra Australis’ or a sea passage from the Pacific to Chile. But like Te Whenua Moemoeaa, or Australia, New Zealand was eventually colonised by the British, with Captain James Cook and his syphilis-ridden crew aboard the HMS Endeavour making first contact for the English-speaking world more than a century later in 1769. Again, as in Te Whenua Moemoeā, Cook left a lasting imprint on the national consciousness, naming coastal and inland landmarks and, of course, designating various landmarks in his own name.

The initial interactions between hapuu, the primary social units in Maaori society, and European powers were tentative, with small skirmishes taking place at various points in the years leading up to 1840. But these collisions of culture would eventually give way to hapuu hopes for an exchange of ideas, technology and commerce. Contact with Paakehaa (or Europeans) exposed Maaori to new technologies for land production and between 1800 and 1850 the agricultural and horticultural base of Maaori expanded as hapuu added new crops like wheat and potatoes to their plantations. Ancient inter-hapuu trade networks flourished, extending all the way to Australia and California. While this expansion was occurring, Maaori continued to practise kaitiakitanga (guardianship) over their resources in order to protect Papatuuaanuku.