A delegation of Whanganui River M\u0101ori is travelling to the United States to support North American Indigenous leaders and tribes of the under threat Colorado River.<\/p>\n
The delegation to crisis talks in Arizona is representing Te Awa Tupua, the Whanganui River. It includes the two people appointed by the river tribes as Te Pou Tupua, the human face and voice of the Whanganui River.<\/p>\n
Over 10 days Keria Ponga, Turama Hawira and the rest of the delegation will meet with many of the 30 tribal nations who have historic ties to the Colorado River basin in what is now the United States and Mexico.<\/p>\n
The exchange will focus on the plight of the dwindling Colorado River. The waterway is in decline due to chronic overuse, including increasing water take for irrigation, and the effects of climate change. There are fears the river system could collapse.<\/p>\n
Te Pou Tupua told Local Democracy Reporting the talks with tribes and nations from Saturday 11 February would continue the earlier work of M\u0101ori and Native American indigenous leaders to urge a fundamental rethinking of how water and rivers are managed.<\/p>\n
“In 2020, their leaders came to Aotearoa to meet with Whanganui iwi. They were concerned for their threatened Colorado River,” Ponga said.<\/p>\n
“We had achieved a globally recognised victory for Te Awa Tupua and they wanted to learn from us. They also wanted to share indigenous ways of governance and protection of our natural world.<\/p>\n
“We are travelling to [Arizona] to continue our conversation. Together we want to offer an alternative to a colonial mentality centred on resource-taking.”<\/p>\n
Te Pou Tupua will travel from Peach Springs, Arizona, through to the San Xavier District to meet the Hualapai, Colorado River Indian (Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo), Fort Mojave Indian and Pascua Yaqui tribes, the Gila River Indian Community and the Tohono O’odham Nation. They will also connect with the Inter Council of Arizona made up of 30 tribal chiefs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A delegation of Whanganui River M\u0101ori is travelling to the United States to support North American Indigenous leaders and tribes of the under threat Colorado River. The delegation to crisis talks in Arizona is representing Te Awa Tupua, the Whanganui River. It includes the two people appointed by the river tribes as Te Pou Tupua, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2934,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions\/2934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}