In A Place Made for You?, John Paul Ryan turns to the Hokonui hills of Murihiku, a significant landscape in the far south of Te Waipounamu, to explore the concept of ‘regard for place’. Born into a local farming family, Ryan has known the Southland region all his life. Why, he asks, do these modest, almost understated hills always stay with him, even at times when he has lived far away? This book explores this central question. As Ryan walks the hills (walking being, as he notes, in itself a way of knowing), he looks again at this much-altered terrain and its complicated history.
Drawing on theology and philosophy, extensive archival research and personal encounters with the hills, Ryan traces the many ways people have interacted with this landscape over time, from the foundational and ongoing presence of mana whenua to twenty-first-century farming and forestry. Blending history, reflection and close attention to place, A Place Made for You? offers a distinctive perspective on how we understand and relate to the landscapes we inhabit – and the possibility of a ‘right relationship’ with the more-than-human world.