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Remember the arrivals of Mā’ohi ancestors who traversed the sea and surged upon the shores. Over generations, many groups explored and peopled te fenua, travelling around the archipelagos by va’a and on bare foot. Te nūna’a Mā’ohi built up the land, and the land built up te nūna’a, with fare, fa’apū, tumu, marae, and stories. Te fenua and te nūna’a shared experiences and developed knowledges, year in, year out, together. 

In other worlds, those we call popa’āwere knowing and being in very different ways. Over time, te popa’ābuilt physical, spiritual, and epistemic walls to imagine a separation between themselves and the land. They dreamed of knowing without relation, and called it “objectivity.” Adrift in the violent nightmares of their mindless fantasies, te popa’ābecame ungrounded. They tried to fill this existential void through stories of supremacism, which they acted out through projects of transoceanic conquest. In their empty confusion, te popa’ācame to te fenua Mā’ohi with greed, envy, arrogance, disease, and weapons of mass destruction. 

Whether through deliberate genocide or oblivious indifference, popa’āarrivals decimated Mā’ohi communities, as local populations fell by 80% to 90%. This formative trauma foreshadowed disasters to come. Te popa’āstole te fenua’s physical wealth on a massive scale, and then imposed a nuclear weapons testing program, bringing radioactive waste, cancer, and other illness. Te popa’ātimed the introduction of mass tourism with atomic testing, to obscure the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the nuclear program. They deceived ta’ata Mā’ohi with empty stories, progressively luring many ta’ata into a modern nuclear-tourism future of individualism, wage labor, cash economies, consumer advertising, broadcast entertainment, artificial scarcity, and nuclear family subdivisions. Te popa’āsought to break the bond between te ta’ata and te fenua. They did not know, this bond cannot be broken. 

The popa’āproject of supremacist colonial modernization is ongoing. But so is the Mā’ohi project of knowing and growing with the land. 

Tahitian language glossary

fare house(s), building(s)

feafea (i) thinking (of, about)

fenua land(s), territory(ies), world(s)

fa’apū garden(s); place(s) for growing crops

nūna’a people, peoples, nation(s)

Mā’ohi Indigenous to French Polynesia

marae ceremonial pavilion(s)

miti salt water; sea(s)

o of

popa’ā the people who think they are white

te the, a, an, some

ta’ata person, people, human(s)

tumu tree(s); root(s)

va’a canoe(s); sailing canoe(s)

Photo: Maupiti lagoon. Text, photo and layout by Teo Akande Wickland. Made with Mā’ohi, Black American, Latinx, queer, feminist and modern/colonial knowledges.

Wickland, Teo Akande. "Feafea i te miti o te fenua ." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11, 2023

Place-making practices refer to the ways in which people create and define physical spaces as meaningful and significant through their everyday activities and social interactions.[1] In Ethnography, the study of these practices is often referred to as ‘ethnography as place-making,’ which involves the exploration of the cultural meanings and practices that shape the physical and social environments in which people live. This can include examining how people create and maintain social boundaries, how they express their identities and values through the built environment,[2] and how they negotiate power and control over the spaces they inhabit.

This place in Gröpelingen is made a place through the interaction of the people tending to the urban gardening project. 

1. Pink 2008, 178ff. 

2. See: urbanization 

3. Pink 2008, 190. 

"The report distills cutting-edge learnings from a variety of scientific disciplines in a way that seeks to be accessible to a broad array of readers. The scientific standards used to develop the report include systematic and targeted searches using electronic research and grey literature databases of English language articles, with preference given to systematic literature reviews, metaanalyses, and replicable findings in multiple, large-scale, and/or well-designed studies from reputable sources. Where possible, such well-supported evidence is presented and related methodologies are described. Where not available, supportive or promising evidence, emerging from fewer studies and/or studies with smaller or otherwise less representative samples, are presented instead. These instances are flagged as such, and are presented only when better quality evidence does not yet exist and because they still represent findings of emerging interest and relevance to the field.” (p. xvii)

“Advances in functional neuroimaging, developmental neurobiology, genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have begun to decode the complex mechanisms by which early adversity can become biologically embedded and influence life-course health and even the health of the next generation.” (p. 12)

“Project Cal-Well of the California Department of Education (CDE)1416 and the Healthy Environment and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) program of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF),1417 are two case studies in California that are presented to provide a snapshot of how primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of toxic have been translated into school settings.” (p. 196)

"Between 2005–2006 and 2017–2018, there was a 47% relative increase in the number of public schools nationwide with one or more security staff with the authority to arrest students.1411 When public schools increasingly rely on school resource officers to discipline students at school, school-based arrests go up.1412 Combating these systems using restorative justice techniques that emphasize redirection and de-escalation tactics, and prioritize time in the classroom, can minimize re-traumatization and mistrust and better support students’ long-term physical, social-emotional, and cognitive growth.1408-1410” (p. 195)

ACEs Aware Grants program: “Awarded 150 grants to 100 organizations across the state in three categories—Provider Training, Provider Engagement, and Communications—to expand the reach and impact of the ACEs Aware initiative” (vii)

“Historically, the national child welfare system has directed almost all its attention and resources to tertiary prevention efforts for children who have already experienced abuse and/or neglect (i.e., to prevent recurrence). In California, the Department of Social Services (CDSS) is the administrative agency that oversees the child welfare system. The Office of Child Abuse Prevention (OCAP) within CDSS has recently championed a more overt primary prevention focus (i.e., preventing abuse and neglect before they occur) by addressing the major drivers of child welfare involvement: poverty, unaddressed mental health challenges of caregivers, substance use, and a parental history of child abuse.1198 “ (p. 163)

“ACEs Connection—an information-exchange catalyst and social network community of practice in the worldwide ACEs and toxic stress movement—had been working in partnership with the EfC Initiative to identify and document ACEs-related activities (e.g., trainings or events) at the local level. In this effort, ACEs Connection developed a mapping tool for displaying ACEs and trauma-informed organizational activities geographically and by sector.1529 Three California counties (Fresno, San Diego, and Santa Barbara) have been piloting its use to help track their local ACEs-related work.” (p. 285)

“Resilience is the ability to withstand or recover from stressors, and results from a combination of intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors (like safe, stable, and nurturing relationships with family members and others), and predisposing biological susceptibility.42,98,99. Of note, while the term resilience is often considered in the mental health and behavioral domains, scientific advances in understanding of the impact of stress on neuro-endocrine-immune-metabolic and genetic regulatory health compel advancement of the definition of resilience to also include these domains as well.” (p. 18-19)

Primary prevention: “Public education campaigns to raise awareness of ACEs and toxic stress, and to arm the public with science-based solutions for reducing the impact of ACEs on children and adults, paired with policy strategies to support safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments; Access to high-quality mental and physical healthcare, including family-centered treatments; • Enabling opportunities for stress-buffering activities such as access to nature, mindfulness activities, physical activity, and sufficient and high-quality sleep; Providing high-quality early and ongoing learning opportunities, including for social-emotional learning, executive function skills, healthy relationship skills, and responding to challenges; Cross-sector and sector-specific training in trauma-informed tools, approaches, and strategies for all providers engaging with children and families; and public health surveillance and policy-oriented applications of population-level indicators of exposure to ACEs and impacts of toxic stress.” (p. xxx)

Secondary prevention: “There is a consensus of scientific evidence that early detection and early intervention improves outcomes related to toxic stress. 6-9,23,31,603,704” (p. xxx)

Tertiary prevention: “Tertiary prevention involves interventions beyond the clinical setting. This report outlines how each sector—healthcare, public health, social services, early childhood, education, and justice— can contribute to healing the harmful effects of ACEs and toxic stress. To truly achieve practice and population health transformation, coordinating a cross-sector network of highly effective and transformative referral and service options is imperative.” (xxxii)

“Public health efforts should target preventing or reducing environmental factors that worsen toxic stress physiology, such as exposure to lead and air pollution” (p. 155)

“While vulnerable communities experience greater stressors and are therefore at higher risk, it is important to recognize that ACEs happen in every sociodemographic group, and that they are often under-recognized in upper-income and non-minority groups; therefore, universal approaches are necessary.” (p. 171) 

“Exposure to ACEs can also set up transmission of health risks across generations by altering gene expression (epigenetics) in parents to be, which can affect the development and health of their children, and future generations to come.32,33 Intergenerational transmission of toxic stress physiology can also perpetuate and exacerbate socially rooted inequities in health, achievement, socioeconomic mobility, and mortality.16,29,35,36,60,62” (xviii)

“While there currently exist no widely agreed-upon clinical diagnostic criteria for toxic stress, a number of biomarkers associated with neuro-endocrine-immune-metabolic disruption are under investigation.332-334” (p. 30)

“More research is needed to precisely identify clinically useful biomarkers to diagnose and follow risk of toxic stress longitudinally, as well as more specific therapeutic targets.” (xviii)

“Policy- and systems-level efforts to prevent ACEs and toxic stress also depend on the awareness and engagement of the general public and governmental decision-makers. The “political will” to implement pro-child, pro-family policies and budgets is influenced by social norms about the status of children and the loci of responsibility for their well-being. The dominant public narrative about child abuse and neglect, for example, has been characterized by an individual focus on “bad” parents and government interference. Based on research findings, the FrameWorks Institute has created a social counter-narrative that can help engage the public in understanding early child development as it applies to child abuse and neglect prevention, understanding potential policy directions, and supporting solutions to pressing problems.” (p. 148)

“Lead is an example of a specific environmental exposure that interacts with the toxic stress response, in that the effects of lead exposure are more powerful in children who are experiencing toxic stress, and vice versa. Lead exposure disrupts a child’s ability to recover from early life stress. Both animal and human studies have identified toxic stress and lead as affecting shared neurobiological systems, including the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, as well as the frontal cortex and hippocampus (parts of the mesocorticolimbic system). Exposure to lead in early life can result in potentially lifelong alterations in the HPA axis and accentuate physiologic responses to stress.169 Exposures to both lead and toxic stressors (like ACEs) together result in enhanced neurotoxicity.170 Exposure to lead also acts synergistically with stress during pregnancy and early childhood, and is associated with decreased IQ, increased incidence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), antisocial behavior, preterm birth, lower birth weight, and juvenile justice involvement.” (p. 24)

“Exposure to ACEs and the associated dysregulation of the immune system involved in toxic stress can combine with breathing polluted air to exacerbate negative asthma-related outcomes.” (p. 27)

“As another example, in utero exposure to both stress and air pollution can increase oxidative stress, which may affect the development of the fetal lungs, including increasing airway inflammation and adverse simplification of the normally complex structure.235,236 In fact, an increased risk of asthma was found in children co-exposed in utero to fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ) and maternal stress (OR 1.15; 95% CI, 1.03-1.26) during the phase of lung development when many of the peripheral airways important in asthma develop (canalicular phase).” (p. 27)