The research has morphed into looking at everything that falls outside of the narrow definition the Crown has created to tell Māori how we relate to the sea and coastline. As well as all of the fronts we fight on to protect not only our relationship to the moana, but the moana itself. I’ve been working on Coastal Cannibals for the past three years and I’m constantly adding to it. The series focuses on the Whangārei Harbour, Whangārei Te Rerenga Parāoa, and the heavy industry established on and around the place, including residential housing developments. The heavy industry are places like the oil refinery, the Portland cement works, the Limestone works, the marinas—all these things gobbling up our environment and our moana. Some of the residential developments around Ruakākā and Marsden Point have carved out the land to channel the moana, creating canals so people can have their own jetty to park their boats like they park their cars. For coastal and ocean tribes, the moana is an important and significant place—the ocean is everything. To see it being used in this way is very frustrating—it’s taking and using our land in a way that assumes our interests have been extinguished. They haven’t. (Adapted from a 2021 interview with Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau.)