My name is Maria Blanca Ayala, and I am an environmental anthropologist interested in the study of conservation strategies for cultural and biological diversity. I have lived many lives - the current one began in March 2014, when I moved with my husband and our then one-year-old son from Barcelona to Ōtautahi. As a newcomer to this land, I was irresistibly drawn to the idea of putting together local indigenous knowledge and scientific biosecurity to halt diseases that decimate forest ecosystems. I wanted to know more! Between 2019 and 2023, within the frame of a PhD in anthropology at the University of Canterbury, I conducted extensive fieldwork on various research and management initiatives related to pathogen induced tree diseases. Most, but not all, of these projects were being carried out under the umbrella of the Biological Heritage NSC. 

​You could be forgiven for not knowing what fieldwork in anthropology entails. Being the most peculiar of the social sciences, it is a distant echo of imperial ambition, and today only a small group of initiated (and not even all of its practitioners) seem to fully understand what anthropology is about. Maybe a movie reference can help me illustrate the point. Do you remember Sigourney Weaver's fictional character in Avatar? I am referring to that uncanny blue woman Dr Grace, who learned the culture and language of the natives to facilitate the plundering of their natural resources, but in the process of internalising a different worldview, her own began to crack.

Outside cinematographic fiction, anthropologists can go through phases of cognitive dissonance, particularly while working at the nexus of knowledge systems radically opposed. Uncomfortable as they can be, I found these moments of deep reckoning invigorating and regenerative. Presumably, over time, the weight of these accumulated fissures in anthropologists' minds and souls allowed indigenous knowledge systems to permeate their methods, their most original theories, and even the way in which their findings are presented. 

My PhD was packed with such moments. No one at my university felt comfortable supervising the work of a non-Māori person attempting to conduct research that might include elements of tikanga and mātauranga Māori. My main supervisor was not replaced after leaving the department, and no one else had the necessary experience to manage my research project. I carried on out of stubbornness and because I had somehow secured the invaluable guidance and support of Kelly Kahukiwa and kaumātua across kauri lands. They became my cultural advisors, my mentors, and my friends. However, the university authorities immediately dismissed their contributions, citing a lack of credentials. Their expertise was of a different order. Their vast knowledge was not the type of knowledge required, but by then, completing what I had started was a personal commitment to them. My writing only became a doctoral dissertation after the incredibly generous Hugo Reinert, Associate Professor in the Cultural History of Nature at the University of Oslo, came on board. 

Tensions over method and the validity of knowledge were always present. During my fieldwork, I often read perplexity in the eyes of the most junior pathologists and microbiologists at the end of our interviews. Their final remarks lucidly exposed the nature of their bewilderment: "Did you get all the information you needed? Well, you have my contact details in case you remember something important you missed." Other times, they seemed frustrated that my attention constantly escaped the strict scientific procedure, as I enquired about issues apparently disconnected from their work. Zooming out was not an ADHD symptom but a professional necessity.

Outside laboratory settings, especially when freely wandering into te ao Māori, learning as a child would do (asking questions, helping with minor tasks, repeating phrases, and even imitating gestures) was allowed and even encouraged. More often than not, my role as a clumsy apprentice proved extremely useful in a space where power and authority were as contested as in the contact zones of scientific biosecurity and mātauranga Māori. It also revealed conflicts over what was worthy of recognition, resources, and continuity. As the research advanced, the concept of epistemic violence - that is, the harm caused by a system that suppress specific types of knowledge, experiences, perspectives, etc. became increasingly important.

The basic questions that guided my study were, what we know, how we know it, and how what we think we know conditions our relationships with other species and the land we inhabit - or put otherwise, how our accumulated knowledge about forest health and pathogenic infestations is translated into the landscape by shaping policies, research projects, and biosecurity interventions. The result, Vanishing Forests: A More-Than-Human Ethnography of the Construction of Knowledge in Aotearoa New Zealand Biosecurity, is an intricate description of the society where collective efforts to halt kauri dieback and myrtle rust were taking place.

I was interested in understanding and making visible what enabled and what prevented genuine collaboration for biodiversity protection between government agencies, research institutions, and local communities. Seeking common ground with scientific expertise and kaumātua authority, and pursuing a stable terrain from which my observations couldn't be easily challenged. I tried to evaluate each research intervention (including my own), by assessing the value of its approach, scope, and relevance in relation to its potential impact on the land, the trees, and the people involved. While weaving many different threads together, I strove to preserve the colours and textures of each individual story. Before submission, many of you were kind enough to read, edit, and authorise my accounts of our interactions. Together, these stories and the subsequent analysis are a tribute to the legacy of the Biological Heritage's Ngā Rakau Taketake team.