Professor Huhana Smith

Huhana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Raukawa ki te Tonga) is an inter and transdisciplinary researcher who engages in major environmental projects about freshwater health and climate change that beset ancestral lands and related biodiversity for Kuku Horowhenua, within Aotearoa New Zealand, and into the world.

Huhana is also a co-curator who engages in strategic planning and implementing large-scale kaupapa Māori and action-orientated art projects with key artists and designers within the group called Te Waituhi ā Nuku: Drawing Ecologies. This global/local group combine contemporary art and design visual systems into exhibitions as research methods, when Kuku Biochar Project was shown at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in December 2002-March 2023 as part of Te Au: Liquid Constituencies. Every art intervention highlights potential solutions/scenarios to address the many environmental decline problems faced.

Huhana is currently leading projects in Horowhenua-Kāpiti, using mātauranga Māori methods as grounded knowledge of place perspective alongside mapping technologies and sciences, in order to address climate change concerns for the coastal farm of hapū of Ngāti Tukorehe. The latest mapping and photogrammetry drone based project is helping make the complex emissions reductions plans accessible to local Māori coastal landholders, with coincidental benefit for wider communities.