Unutai e! Unutai e!

As part of evidence gathering for the Ngāi Tahu Freshwater Statement of Claim, Te Kura Taka Pini commissioned celebrated photographer ANNE NOBLE, ONZM, to document waterways and water bodies in the takiwā. Examples of Anne’s work are included in this issue of TE KARAKA with a more extensive portfolio of her work to be exhibited, Unutai e! Unutai e!, hosted by Dunedin Public Art Gallery in May 2025.

“WE NEEDED AN INDEPENDENT PERSPECTIVE AND PHOTOGRAPHS TO capture our freshwater environments and to highlight the degradation we’re experiencing in our waterways and water bodies,” says Gabrielle Huria, Te Titirei/Chief Executive, Te Kura Taka Pini.

“Anne’s powerful photographs deserve a wider audience, and we thank Ōtākou Rūnaka and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery for making that possible. Her exhibition is scheduled to open at the gallery on 31 May.”

Anne has previously worked with Kāi Tahu, documenting the migration story through photographs for Takahanga Marae in Kaikōura.
The Ngāi Tahu Freshwater Statement of Claim has been brought because of the catastrophic environmental impact of the Crown’s failure, over many decades, to adequately protect freshwater.

Despite the Treaty of Waitangi, the Ngāi Tahu Deed of Settlement 1997 and the Ngāi Tahu Settlement Act 1998, the Crown has sidelined and constrained the exercise of Kāi Tahu rakatirataka. The result is evident today in the intense pressure on, and degradation of, the health of surface and groundwater systems within the takiwā.

The case, scheduled to start on 10 February, will be heard in the High Court in Christchurch.