ABSTRACT
As an embodiment of the energy of the life-world and a lawmaker within the terms of a Maori world view, the longfin eel (or tuna) teaches how to live responsibly in place. This paper follows the shimmering trail of the eel, encountering environmental contradiction and catastrophe in its path. Revealing the death-world of settler colonial reconstruction and the bad faith that underpins latter-day conservation agendas in so-called new world places, the eel destabilises settler certainties and calls forth a set of problems – ecological, pedagogical and constitutional – that refuse to remain submerged.
