Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is the Māori Archivist at Uare Taoka o Hākena Hocken Collections held at the University of Otago. Rauhina is also an expert on pakake, the New Zealand sea lion (Phocarctos hookeri).

This scientist profile is one of six featured in this group of resources that explore animal ethics with a kaupapa Māori approach. A downloadable PDF of the combined scientist profiles is available in both a bilingual and a te reo Māori version.

He mihi

Ko Hikaroroa te mauka
Ko Waikouaiti te awa
Ko Araiteuru te waka
Ko Araiteuru te tai
Ko Kāi Tahu, ko Kāti Māmoe, ko Waitaha kā iwi
I te taha o tōku hākoro, nō Ingarangi, nō Airani, nō Kōtirani ōku tīpuna
I te taha o tōku hākui, koia te taha Māori
I tipu ake ahau ki Ōtepoti
Ko Rauhina Scott-Fyfe ahau
Mauri ora.

Pakake – a critically endangered species

In 2018/19, Rauhina researched and wrote a report on mātauranga Māori about the pakake, the New Zealand sea lion (Phocarctos hookeri). After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Māori Studies from the University of Otago, they were approached by Ngāi Tahu representatives about conducting this research, which was commissioned under the provisions made for iwi input in the Department of Conservation (DOC) New Zealand sea lion threat management plan.

The pakake is an endemic marine mammal of this country, once found all around the coast. They were driven off the mainland by unsustainable hunting, first by Māori and then by European sealers in the late 18th century. At present, the pakake is an endangered species and is considered nationally critical. It is one of the rarest sea lions in the world – with only about 12,000 remaining in the Subantarctic populations.

Stakeholders in the sea lion threat management plan include the deep-sea fishing industry, Forest & Bird, local farm owners, local government, DOC, the Ministry for Primary Industries and Ngāi Tahu as mana whenua and Treaty partner.

For their research, Rauhina collated existing published accounts of Māori knowledge of pakake and interviewed 18 Ngāi Tahu people with varying experience of pakake. Some of them work in iwi conservation and kaitiaki roles, and others come into contact with pakake while pursuing other activities such as fishing or muttonbirding. Some were simply local people who grew up on the Otago Peninsula, naturally encountering pakake whenever they would go to the beach.

Working as an archivist

Rauhina works at Hākena, the Hocken Collections, which is a publicly accessible research library and part of the University of Otago Library. They are training as an archivist, currently working on the Herries Beattie papers – Rauhina used the papers for the pakake research.

Beattie was born in Gore in 1881, the son of Scottish immigrants, and from an early age showed a strong interest in history and archival practice. Riding his bicycle around the area, he meticulously recorded the stories and kōrero of Ngāi Tahu tīpuna. Beattie was a self-trained anthropologist but saw himself primarily as a collector. He refrained from too much interpretation of what he was told. Rauhina found an intriguing note by Beattie at the bottom of one of the pages of his records: “There are hidden meanings in tales if we could unlock the gate of folklore with the key of science.”

Māori naming for sea lions is not straightforward for two (or more) reasons. First, there has been widespread confusion between the animals and names for sea lions and leopard seals. Leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) are an entirely different species. This confusion even extended to certain key legal documents. The Māori name for leopard seals is rāpoka, but this name has also been incorrectly applied to sea lions.

The second complication is that the New Zealand sea lion displays marked sexual dimorphism, with the males and females being quite different in appearance. Māori call the big male sea lions whakahao – this word can also mean to gather up. Rauhina thinks whakahao refers to the male pakake behaviour of rounding up a harem of females, which are called kake (or kaki). Pakake is a name for sea lions generally but also (especially in other areas) for whales and other marine mammals, possibly in a generic sense.

Rauhina’s path to becoming an expert

Rauhina was only 1-year-old when the pakake named Mum came ashore on a beach on the Otago coastline to have her pup. It was the first pakake to be born on mainland Te Waipounamu whenua in over 200 years.

That breeding season was 1993/94. Rauhina grew up immersed in these special sea mammals. Their mother belongs to the iwi of the area, and their father works as a scientist and coastal marine ranger for the Department of Conservation.

Rauhina remembers how the population of breeding females grew very slowly year after year. They marked the milestones as the number of breeding kake reached double figures at 10 females, growing to more than 20 breeding females and still climbing slowly. Through the kake or maternal lines the whakapapa or lineage of the recovering pakake population is also being recorded. All of the kake have names to which local iwi and rūnanga contribute.

Rauhina grew up going out to their marae at Puketeraki in Karitāne, 40 km north of Ōtepoti. Having strong connections to pakake all their life put Rauhina in a good position to do this mahi rangahau and write the report.

Growing up, a favourite activity was going out to the local beaches and observing pakake on the Otago coastline.

I’ve always worked with sea lions because I have been constantly learning from my dad through the mahi that he has done with sea lions over many decades and about observation. Now, a big part of science is observation, and a big part of mātauraka Māori knowledge is observation, and a lot of this work has been observing these animals and their behaviours.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

Pakake habitats

Kekeno or fur seals are found in rocky coastal areas, whereas pakake inhabit sandy beaches. The breeding females go up into the dunes with their young, often now among pine trees, hiding away from the big males. By the time Rauhina remembers Mum, she had cataracts from old age.

As a 16-year-old, Rauhina accompanied their father on a research trip to the Subantarctic Auckland Islands, where populations of pakake had kept the species going for a century after they went extinct on the mainland. From those distal populations, pakake have returned to the Otago Peninsula to recolonise their former breeding grounds and habitats – now often turned into coastal farms or pine forests with roads and fences encroaching on their nests and trails.

Influence of te ao Māori on Rauhina’s work

Two Māori concepts that Rauhina relates to working with sea lions are tapu and tika.

When we advocate for animals as Māori, we are carrying the knowledge of our tīpuna with us, and by being here now and observing what is happening now, we can make those connections and bring tikanga to the spaces and types of interactions we observe with the creatures now.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

Rauhina continues with examples from the Subantarctic Islands.

Down in the Subantarctic Islands, for example, the population is declining. We’re seeing a lot of deaths of pups from various causes. While viruses are one factor, the mums need to go out and feed themselves so they can keep feeding their young pups, and they’re often supporting a yearling as well. The exact time when they’re doing that is when the squid fisheries are operating in the same area, so we see a lot of deaths of these mums, and of course her pup also dies, often her yearling as well.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

Tika – making the right response

Pono, tika and aroha are central values or ethical concepts of te ao Māori. Although each word can stand alone, when considered together, they encompass a sense of doing the right thing with integrity and love. Rauhina applies these concepts to research.

When we advocate as Māori, we see the nuances. We can’t say ‘no more fishing’ but we can advocate for using systems that do not injure sea lions. When we observe researchers working, we as Māori are the ones advocating for less harmful ways of working with the animals. For example, at one point, researchers were using hot branding to mark their numbers into the animals. It was a Ngāi Tahu researcher who said, “Hey, this isn’t okay, let’s try using something else.” We can explore different ways of working that are less harmful, for example, bleaching the numbers into their fur.

Māori knowledge can help when dealing with death as a small group of researchers who go down to the Subantarctic Islands to do the pup counts and who are trying to work out why the rates of pup death are high – a small group of people who’ll be on an isolated island for 6 weeks or so. As Māori, we can offer something in that space that others can’t around tikanga, karakia, wairua.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

A parable for mātauranga Māori

Rauhina shares a whakataukī.

Ko te whakahao te hoa kakari o Te Wera

A whakahao was the only thing that frightened Te Wera

This whakataukī commemorates a famous Ngāi Tahu fighting chief named Te Wera. One day, he was walking down the beach at a place called Kai-arohaki on Rakiura, attended by 70 men, when a large male whakahao suddenly reared up in front of him and startled him. A huge male is an awe-inspiring sight, and Te Wera may be pardoned for thinking discretion the better part of valour. The point of the saying is also that Rakiura was sparsely inhabited, so Te Wera had no need to engage in battle there. His only foe was a male pakake, the enormous whakahao.

Rauhina reflects on this story as a parable for mātauranga Māori.

The deeper meaning is that we are scared of things we don’t know and don’t understand, which is very, very apt for this particular animal, because if you don’t understand its behaviour and the way it interacts, you will be frightened if you encounter one, because it will come running at you.

The whakahao does a kind of bluff charge where it runs right up to you, and if you run away, it chases you, but if you stay completely still and ignore it, it will stop about a metre or half a metre away from you and just flop down. So if you don’t understand its behaviour, it’s a very scary thing.

But that also applies to anything about mātauranga or Māori knowledge. If we don’t know about it, we are scared of it, but if we understand it then we’re not afraid of it any more.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe

Pakake – numbers are on the rise

The growing population of pakake in Ōtepoti is cause for optimism regarding this endangered species. However, their breeding season coincides with the busy summer holiday season. Ōtepoti is an urban area, which can cause issues as pakake move to inland areas to raise their pups. Rauhina points out how Māori ethics can help.

Pakake and people are coming into contact once again on the beaches of the Otago Peninsula and having to learn how to interact with each other. This is where tika and Māori ethics can help as well as tapu in having to deal with so much death. Māori ethics is holistic and relational and does not think in terms of single species. This tension came up in my research, since talking about protecting one species is not how we think as Māori. How can we hold all these things together? As Māori, we have a place to influence the story of the pakake – kei a tātou te mana – we have the right and authority to do this.

Rauhina Scott-Fyfe