Is it our fresh air, our wonderful natural environment? Our rich and diverse cultures? Our tolerance for one another? Our relatively uncrowded islands? Or our seeming sanity in a world of increasing madness and divisiveness?
That there are so many possibilities to choose from speaks volumes about what an incredible country we live in.
Imagine you are as far from these shores as you can be. Homesick, and perhaps stuck in crowded London on a damp, dark winter’s afternoon. What would absolutely scream "Aotearoa" at you and make you feel closer to home?
It could be as trivial as someone saying "yeah, nah". Or it might be hearing Split Enz’s I Got You on the radio, or kids having a go at doing a haka at rugby practice in the park.
Or it might be seeing someone opposite you on the Underground wearing a pounamu toki around their neck, forging an immediate link that both of you are either New Zealanders or have New Zealand in common.
Pounamu — also known as greenstone, a member of the jade family found in a handful of countries near fault zones — is truly one of our taonga. But as well as the spiritual mysteries it carries, of special significance to its guardians Ngai Tahu, it holds tightly to the structural and physical secrets which make it so tough.
Now a detailed multi-agency investigation of pounamu’s enigmatic and steel-like properties has received $927,000 from the Marsden Fund to delve into those secrets.
The research project will be a close collaboration between Ngai Tahu, GNS Science and the University of Otago, and will incorporate matauranga Maori knowledge and materials science to find out why pounamu is so strong, and therefore ideal for carving, when the minerals which comprise it are themselves relatively soft.
Pounamu carvers will select and rank about 150 samples for further analysis.
A more detailed scientific understanding of pounamu will not only reveal more about pounamu, but also help scientists’ knowledge of earthquakes and fluid circulation around major fault zones.
That knowledge could also be used to identify our semi-precious pounamu from imported jades, reducing the risks that illegal dealing could affect the trade, and the people and operations it supports, here.
Pounamu is only found in the South Island and belongs to Ngai Tahu, to whom ownership was given in 1997 as part of its Treaty of Waitangi settlement.
While a small amount of rummaging around for pounamu is allowed on West Coast beaches, limited to what can be carried home in your pockets or by backpack per day, collection elsewhere in the iwi’s area is illegal.
The Alpine Fault always gets a bad rap because of the danger it poses from a now-due magnitude 8 or higher earthquake.
But we also need to appreciate what this major rupture between tectonic plates brings us. Without it, there would be no Southern Alps, no beautiful West Coast rainforest, no warm nor’westers in the east.
Neither would we be able to find pounamu, formed at depth by millions of years of heat and pressure. For it is the Alpine Fault which draws these deposits up to the surface, enabling them to be eroded, and revealed, from bedrock and scattered across the land by glaciers and rivers.
Congratulations to all those who will be working on this important investigation, which brings together iwi and scientists, matauranga Maori and science, in an inspirational way to teach us all more about our incredible land.
