Overwhelmed by the complexity of climate change, Hura set out to find a language to connect more deeply to the environmental crisis.

But what began as a journalistic quest to understand the science takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother.

In the midst of grief, Hura’s writing works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. 

Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost?

Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism.

As Hura writes: “What is achingly present in every landscape across Aotearoa is absence: disappeared peaks, drained wetlands, flattened forests, sunken and strangled eel weirs, straightened rivers, silt-choked beaches, slip-eroded slopes, pulverised pā and polluted hills rotting with buried rubbish.

“This is the ‘starting point’ for Māori climate adaptation. The environmental destruction was achieved through a combination of military force, legal trickery, constitutional cunning, and institutional and cultural amnesia. It continues today through mechanisms of unbridled power, of which the recently passed Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 is just the latest.”

Hura, a Māmā, poet and essayist, has written extensively for The Spinoff, E-Tangata and other platforms, while pursuing writing and advocacy for the protection of Papatūānuku and revitalisation of matauranga Māori.

“Hope is a shovel and will give you blisters,” she writes.