Principle 3
The Mauri is the web of connections that sustains life. If any of those connections is weakened or broken, the mauri is less able to sustain life.
The integrity of the mauri and its web of connections has greater priority than the rights and needs of any individual or species.
Mauri is a Maori term used to describe an understanding that is found in many cultures. In English it is sometimes translated as “life principle” but that is only part of the meaning.
In traditional cultures the focus is not so much on individual species, but how they are connected together. Every living creature needs other living creatures in order to survive. Life needs life. Flowers need pollinators, cows need grass, everything needs sunshine, and life only survives because of water. That web of connections is what sustains life. And that’s where the mauri is to be found.
We live in a world where more and more living creatures are disappearing; often we don’t know why. Of special concern is the disappearance of insects. Lots of people don’t like insects, or any other sort of creepy crawly thing. But insects pollinate seeds, and without seeds plants die out. So too, in time, will the insects and animals that live with them and feed on them, and so will other species, and eventually, us. Already the slow motion domino effect is starting to happen, and accelerate.
We need to become conscious of that network of life that in fact sustains life, and make sustaining that network more important than our individual needs. Modern agriculture and horticulture may be more productive, with its focus in large scale monocultures and the chemical regimes needed to sustain them. In the short term they may seem the best option to feed the burgeoning human population of the earth, but if the end result is sterile soils and water that is unsafe to drink, how long can we expect to survive?
Every living being has the right to life, even microbes, let alone plants and insects, and of course birds and animals, all of them, not just the ones we find useful. They all have their indispensable role in the web of life, even if we lack the abilities needed to see and understand how.
Mauri is much more than an idea, a useful concept that helps explain how the environment fits together and works. A mauri is a living thing, but one that doesn’t have a physical form, just like an angel. Many people talk about having a guardian angel that watches over them and cares for them. Described that way makes what Maori understand by “mauri” easier to grasp.
Much more could be said about Mauri. Enough to say that from a Maori perspective it has a fundamental role in terms of health and wellness. The restoration of the mauri of a river or landscape, for example, involves much more than the replanting of the appropriate species. It involves even more the restoration of the connections that enables life to thrive, including the re-connection to the people who care for it.
- Pa Ropata / Rob McGowan 2020
