Dr Lorena de la Torre Parra BSc, PDipDS, PhD

This is a co-designed Indigenous-Indigenous trans-Pacific collaborative research project, and the first to recognise that Māori and Andean Indigenous people whose native plants and knowledge systems are intertwined through myrtle rust (MR) as mate urutaa (deadly disease) may also hold the collective key for its rongoā (medicine/cure). This collaboration between Māori and Andean Indigenous knowledge holders will generate timely, accessible scholarship, Traditional Ecological knowledge and digital stories which will be shared with myrtle rust-affected iwi, hāpū and communities in Aotearoa. Between 2024 and 2026, holding cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary encounters, conducting site visits to myrtle rust affected areas in Ecuador and Aotearoa, and facilitating Traditional Ecological Knowledge workshops with visiting Māori and Aotearoa researchers in Ecuador (one of the native homes of myrtle rust), will be in turn complemented by conducting wānanga and facilitating Traditional Ecological Knowledge workshops in Aotearoa with visiting Andean experts on plant pathogens and their management. We envisage this as the catalyst for a wider multi-year project to follow the pathway of MR across the globe to understand its ecology, dispersal mechanisms, impacts and management as they relate to Aotearoa through a relational lens with the aim of finding novel understandings for this complex ecological challenge.