"The brush-tailed possum is a marsupial first introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand from Australia in 1837. They were officially declared a pest in the New Zealand environment in 1946, and continue to substantially degrade native forests at an alarming rate. Skins from these possums have been sent back to Australia, where practitioners of customary possum-skin cloak making have been prohibited by colonial governments from hunting the possum in their own territories to use in their work. Possum trapping is a common form of employment for local Māori communities, but access to Australian Aboriginal customary knowledge from the possum’s site of origin has been rare.

This artistic research project is convened by the collective Local Time, who have coordinated the visit of two South East Australian Aboriginal artists with expertise in possum cloak-making - Vicki Couzens and Tiriki Onus, to Tikapa, New Zealand, where Local Time have convened an annual gathering of artists over the past 20 years. After collaborative exploration of the local environment, a two-day indigenous-led workshop was held at Pōkai Marae, where the artists and local community facilitated community-based artistic exchange around the paihamu/possum and the role of indigenous artistic knowledge practices in maintaining global habitat. This presentation will present the workshop and it's associated creative outputs and exhibition outcomes."