Māori land is a fascinating feature of New Zealand, and now you can see where it all is. Talk Wellington loves anything that sheds light on important and confusing areas… and we really love maps! 

Now anyone can look up their local area and see where there’s Māori land (definitions here  plus some fascinating history).

It’s all possible thanks to Garth Harmsworth and colleagues at Landcare Research, with the newly updated WhenuaViz tool.

Zoom in to your suburb – is there any Māori land there?

Or you can search by area – also an eye-opener.

You can put on cool overlays, like current land cover. How much native bush is there in your area?  Or you can see what economic activity  the land might be suitable for. Cropping? Pastoral / sheep & beef farming? Retirement? (which we guess means “best just let it go back to mānuka scrub and become what Nature intended”!)

In other news for people who love a cool map, there’s a treat in store at He Tohu, the National Library’s amazing exhibition around “signatures that shaped our nation”.

On some truly gorgeous animated mapping (with great sound effects) you can….

• track how Aotearoa/New Zealand’s land ownership went from being all Māori-owned, to where we are today (a potted history of what you can see in Whenuaviz)
• trace the journeys of earliest Polynesian and European explorers (coolest little waka and ships zooming around)
• follow the progress of the Women’s Suffrage Petition as it racked up thousands upon thousands of signatures in a few months

Head along to He Tohu this weekend – it’s open 9-5 Monday to Saturday.

Or have a zoom around in Whenuaviz to discover new things about your local area

 

Image credits:

Maps – screen captures from Whenuaviz

Map table at He Tohu – by Clicksuite (they made the table)

Tags: dataviz, GIS, history, land ownership, Māori, mapping, Masterton, open data, Plimmerton, Pukerua Bay, Upper Hutt