Projects

Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab

Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab is a webpage containing indigenous stories of Māori and Muysca communities.

Colombia & Aotearoa New Zealand

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Legendary Links - a Muysca x Māori collab by indie

Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab is a webpage on the indie website, which hosts indigenous stories from around the world. The website is enabling readers to access incredible stories and helping indigenous people keep their stories alive.

In 2022, indie brought talented Māori and Muysca creatives together to produce quadrilingual versions of five favourite legends, primarily for audiences in Colombia and New Zealand. The Muysca people inhabit what is now Bogotá, Colombia. Although they live a long way away from the Māori people of Aotearoa New Zealand, both cultures have strong relationships with land and community and a shared history of sea voyages between their continents. Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab aims to revitalise their cultures and languages, and create stronger cultural and working relationships between them.

With support from the Latin American Centre of Asia–Pacific Excellence, Education New Zealand and New Zealand’s embassy in Colombia, indie’s creators worked with Māori and Muysca creatives to produce written and narrated versions of three Muysca legends – Grandfather's Story, The Legend of Mother Guatavita and Tequendama – and two Māori legends – The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku and A Story of Hatupatu & Kurangaituku.

To create the webpage, the indie team worked with Māori and Muysca production teams to write stories, produce audio narrations in four languages and create illustrations. The project brought two Muysca communities – Chīa and Sesquile – together, giving them the opportunity to teach and retell their tales and generate ideas for other initiatives. The project has laid the foundations for long-term relationships between the creatives and given them new contacts and networks.

The indie website was co-founded by New Zealand designers Lizzie Dunn and Hannah Craig. Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab resulted from Lizzie participating in the Māori and Pacific Business: Latin America ReConnect programme in 2021. Legendary Links – A Muysca x Māori Collab has been featured at two events in Colombia, hosted by the New Zealand Embassy. As well as being available online, the stories are now being used by Spanish and te reo Māori teachers throughout New Zealand and Muysca communities in Colombia.