It’s a common occurrence for Amelia Blundell to see a photograph of her nan’s hands on the side of delivery trucks. The trucks are delivering kūmara from the Kaipara Kūmara packhouse in Ruawai to supermarkets across the motu. The image of her nan cradling the iconic plant is symbolic of the Blundell whānau’s deep connection to the kūmara growing communities in the Kaipara.
Amelia’s nan (Robin Blundell) and pop (Gary Blundell) established the kūmara growing cooperative Kaipara Kūmara in the early 1970s to enable small growers to combine forces so they could improve the supply chain, making it easier for them to get the kai from the field to supermarket shelves.
This whakapapa has inspired Amelia (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) to undertake a PhD study on how people relate to kūmara across time, place and cultures. Her research explores communities’ narratives of their relationships to the plant, including their harvesting practices, watering, feeding and growing cycles and kōrero tuku iho.
“Whether it’s a commercial grower, worker in the factory or out in the fields, or people who grow kūmara in their own maara, my research aims to understand people’s relationship with kūmara, and it will look at whether plants can be a conduit to deeper and more balanced relationships with taiao,” she says.
Amelia hasn’t always been enamored with the plant. As a child, much of her school holidays were spent working in packhouse grading, washing and packing kūmara. After finishing high school, Amelia couldn’t wait to get as far away from the family business as possible. Her undergrad studies in landscape architecture gave her a new appreciation of the plant — not just as a source of kai and employment, but as something deeper. For some communities, kūmara is bound up with who they are, she says.
Through the course of undertaking her PhD, and spending time with different “kūmara communities”, Amelia says she has come to see plants as tuakana. She credits Kai Rotorua kaumātua Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea with helping her understand how our relationships with plants and the taiao are constantly evolving.
Closer to home, Amelia’s father, Peter Blundell, and her uncle, Anthony Blundell, work managing and directing Kaipara Kūmara and are keen to be part of the evolving relationship between plants, taiao and people. “My dad and uncle totally support me, because they don’t often get the time or resources to think about the bigger picture. I’m hopeful that my research could create opportunities for people working in our food system to create decisions that positively impact everyone and the plants we work with,” she says.
“Dad was super excited because he has been working with the plant most of his life, but it has been limited to the business day-in day-out getting kai on the supermarket shelves, so for him, this is an awesome opportunity to think deeper, encompassing all of the dimensions that make up his relationship with the kūmara. My uncle Anthony, who is the Director of Kaipara Kūmara, is always wanting to enrich everyone’s relationship to kūmara. He says kūmara has an amazing lifecycle and he wants to share it with staff so they too can be more connected to the plant, the whenua and the region of Kaipara.”
Amelia says her drive to start the PhD has come out of her love for plants and kūmara has been the vessel to explore this further in her own life. She says younger people, such as herself, are craving connection to nature. “We’ve grown up googling knowledge and outsourcing information which leads to less connection. But when it comes to growing, you need to experiment and watch nature to see how plants respond when you try things,” she says.
“Plants have an energetic presence in our lives. We are always in relationship to the plants around us so why not make those the deepest, most joyful and beautiful relationships they can be? I believe this is how our tūpuna saw the world and their place in it, and I’m hoping my PhD will in some way help people get back to those ways of seeing and experiencing the world.”