HS-3: Water Infrastructure as Cultural Heritage — Indigenous and Colonial Water Management in Aotearoa New Zealand

Pre-European Māori communities in Aotearoa New Zealand constructed water infrastructure at scales and levels of sophistication that qualify as hydraulic engineering: canal networks spanning 19 km with consistent cross-sections, managed wetland landscapes of 280 ha, ditch networks integrating irrigation, reticulation, and drainage across more than 50 ha, and geothermal water routing across thermal fields of 12 km². Colonial land policy classified these managed landscapes as waste land and converted them to pastoral farmland, destroying the physical evidence along with the systems. This paper presents the first systematic catalogue of these systems framed explicitly as engineering heritage, drawing on primary archaeological reports, iwi sources, and peer-reviewed scholarship. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape (UNESCO World Heritage, 2019) is used as a comparative case to demonstrate that international recognition of indigenous water engineering is viable, and to expose the absence of equivalent recognition for Māori systems that exhibit the same structural characteristics. The paper then proposes translating Te Mana o te Wai — the governance framework codified in New Zealand's National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 — into explicit gameplay mechanics within a historical simulation platform: a mauri health meter scoring water's life force, taniwha non-player-character guardians embodying water's interests, rāhui rest mechanics enforcing recovery periods, and whakapapa time-travel enabling players to trace a water body's lineage across eras. Three playable scenarios are described: lower Wairau canal operation, Tāngonge wetland restoration, and swamp pā landscape management. The novelty claim is narrow and precisely stated: this is the first historically grounded game translating Te Mana o te Wai into explicit mechanics, with prior digital implementations honestly acknowledged.