Click here for the Matariki celebrations at Tāmaki College.

The stars have enabled our ancestors to traverse the largest expanse of ocean on the planet to arrive here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Before the Gregorian calendar, the stars were our time-keeping system that guided our ancestors’ day-to-day, month-to-month, season-to-season, and year-to-year activities. When to plant, harvest, hunt, fish, interact with one another, spend time in isolation, plan, and prepare for the coming season, these activities were guided by acutely observing the rising and setting of the stars with the lunar phases, as well as the position of the sun. Not only did the lunar calendar and the environmental indicators drive our ancestor’s daily activities, but they also helped regulate them. Māori synched their lifestyles to the natural ebbs and environment flows by observing astronomical and environmental markers. Our ancestors were deeply embedded with this knowledge. They knew their continuity and survival as a people depended on it.

At the heart of this unique time-keeping system, is Matariki. Our interaction with our New Zealand ecology, with each other, and the world, pivots around this tight star cluster. Dr. Rangi Matamua (2020), of Ngai Tūhoe and a renowned Māori astronomical expert, posits that Matariki is a time-keeping system better suited to where we are located globally and what is happening in our localised environments: “it is relevant to who we are and where we are” (2020, July 16). So why do we follow an imported calendar that is not tailored to our localised environments?

Appearing first in the autumn sky before reappearing in the winter sky, Matariki heralds the Māori New Year. Traditionally, it was a time to remember the dead and celebrate new life. With the crops harvested, the birds snared and preserved, the seafood collected, the eels caught, dried, and preserved, Matariki was a time of bountiful food; Matariki ahunga nui or the great mounds of Matariki. Matariki was also a time to relax, reflect, plan, sing, dance, and feast.

Matariki is a cluster that has significant meaning throughout the world. Mythologists and folklorists know it as the Seven Sisters; others call it Messier 45, Subaru, and astronomers know them as the Pleiades. According to Matamua (ibid), there are nine observable stars in the Matariki cluster, Te Iwa o Matariki or The Nine of Matariki. Other parts of the world have recorded seeing up to 15 observable stars in the same cluster.

Te Iwa o Matariki is connected to various environmental domains. 

• Waitā is linked to the ocean and the marine life; 
• Waitī is associated with freshwater life; 
• Tupuānuku is linked to the earth and everything that grows therein; 
• Tupuārangi is connected to everything that grows or resides above the head, including trees, fruits, berries, and birds; 
• Waipunarangi is the rain; 
• Ururangi is the wind family; 
• Pōhutukawa is associated with our loved ones who have passed; 
• Hiwa-i-te-rangi encapsulates all our hopes and aspirations; 
• Matariki is connected to the well-being and health of the people.

Long before there was Sir Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapawhā model (1998), there was Matariki, which was not just a model, but a lived and practiced knowledge base that was embedded into the daily lives of the ancestors. Like Durie’s model, it is connected to all facets of our well-being: social, physical, spiritual, and mental. However, Matariki extends on the Whare Tapawhā model to include the well-being of our world and our local ecology and all life that resides within them.

As a gatherer of people, Matariki is social, hence the saying Matariki hunga nui. Matariki is a time of reflection and a time to reconcile our emotions, feelings, and mental well-being in preparation for the coming seasons.

Matariki connects us to our environment, the source of our livelihood, health, and physical well-being. Each star of Te Iwa o Matariki, as mentioned above, is connected to various environmental domains. Each domain is a resource fund that our people relied on for their survival; hence, the reason our ancestors observed each star closely.

Matariki is also very spiritual. The setting of Matariki in the western sky during the autumn month of Haratua was when our ancestors acknowledged the journey of our departed. After completing their 1-year cycle, we believe that during this time, our dead are hauled into the great net of Taramainuku – a process known as Te Hao o Rua – to be suspended at the back of the giant canoe called Te Waka o Rangi. Once suspended, the dead would then descend to a place called Rarohenga or The Underworld (one of the many gathering places of our dead), where they are greeted by our eponymous ancestress and goddess of the night, Hinenuitepō. There, they are prepared for the afterlife and await the next rising of Matariki. Then, when Matariki rises again in winter with the sun, on the eastern horizon, a month later, our loved one’s spirits are cast into the cosmos as stars against the chest of the night sky shining there forever (Matamua, 2018). The process of our becoming stars when we die is the origin of the phrase, “Kua wheturangitia koe” or “You have now become a star.” “Kua takahia te ara ki te wāhi tūturu mō tāua te tangata, kua whetūrangitia, hei whetū kōrero mō tātou kua mahue iho mai.” These were the words that I would often hear my koro say when we attended tangihanga (mourning ceremony), who himself has made that journey and is now woven into the majestic cloak of the night sky as a shining beacon for myself and my family.

For Māori, everything has a story, an origin, a name, and a whakapapa (genealogy). Even our sun has a name, Tamanuiterā, and he is attributed to having two wives who are both stars, Hinetakurua (the winter maiden) and Hineraumati (the summer maiden), with whom he has had much progeny and whom he would accompany during these seasonal times of the year. Similarly, the stars of Matariki are said to be the eyes of the wind god, Tāwhirimātea. Matariki translates as the “eyes of god” (mata ariki) or “little eyes” (mata riki). According to Māori pūrākau, when Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatūānuku, the earth mother, were separated by their children, the god of the winds, Tāwhirimātea, became so enraged that he tore out his eyes and threw them into the heavens. We personify fundamental parts of our environment to bring us closer to them, relate to them, and make sense of them so that we may better be able to take care of them and ourselves. This understanding and vā were profoundly respected and carefully nurtured.

The Samoan indigenous references of the vā and teu le vā, as described by Anae (2016), are the moral and ethical relationships or ‘spaces’ between people, whereas teu le vā is the act of valuing and nurturing the ordinary (noa) and extraordinary (tapu) spaces of relationships. What about the moral and ethical relational spaces between us and the environment? From a Māori holsitic viewpoint to teu le vā, with our land, sky, sea, rivers, and stars, is to practice the relational law of tikanga. The relational space between man and the elements is mediated and protected through tikanga. According to Dr. Moana Jackson (2021, May 9), tikanga is defined as follows:

In simple terms, tikanga is a values system about what “ought to be” that helped us sustain relationships, and whaka-tika or restore them when they were damaged. It is a relational law based on an ethic of restoration that seeks balance in all relationships…Dr. Moana Jackson, May 9 2021

Dr. Moana Jackson, May 9 2021

Matariki is many things to our people: the great respiratory of knowledge, the connector, the translator, and the astronomical link to the environment. They would signal, and we would adhere. Because we now live Westernised lifestyles, we no longer listen to these stars; we no longer watch out for the warnings and messages our environment has been trying to convey. Our world is warming, and as a result, our summers are longer, our winters are shorter, plants are fruiting not just once but twice a year, animals are lean when they are meant to be fat, eels are not migrating as easily and at the numbers that they used to. We are not taking the time to observe these changes in the environment. We no longer care. The vā between humanity and the environment, as well as the vā between humanity and the astronomical markers, have been neglected. I say ‘we’ because I, too, have stopped nurturing these vā.

In the finale episode of his Beyond Matariki series, Matamua (2020, August 6) relays his hopes and aspirations on his viewers, stating:

My hope is that we begin to reconnect with our environment, to synch our lives back into the natural ebbing and flowing of the world. We [need to] understand that we are not in charge of the world, and all its resources, and the planet, but are actually part of it. I hope that we begin to live our lives with a much broader sense of everything that encompasses who and what we are, not just natural resources as part of the economy, but the earth, the stars, the moon, the sun, the trees, the animals, as an extension of who we are. I hope that we are able to embed some of the lessons of our ancestors into our everyday lives that we can begin to practice some of these lessons, and some of these cultural activities, and spiritual activities in a way that enriches our lives in a way that is more sustainable and reconnects us to our past, in order to help us survive in the future.

Never once did our ancestors think themselves above or higher than “the earth, the stars, the moon, the sun, the trees, the animal.” On the contrary, they were treated as superiors, and at the very least, as equals. What did our ancestors mean then when they expressed:

Unuhia te rito o te harakeke, kei hea te kōmako, e kō e? Whakatairangitia, rere ki uta, rere ki tai; ui mai koe ki a au, he aha te mea nui o tēnei ao? Māku e kī atu: he tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

Remove the centre shoot of the flax, and where will the bellbird sing? It will mill around, fly inland, fly seawards, and I urge you to ask me, what is the greatest thing in the world? And I will respond by saying: it is people, it is people, it is people!

Meri Ngāroto, Te Aupōuri, date unknown

According to Henare (2016, November 29), this whakatauākī was a remark made by a Te Aupōuri tūpuna named Meri Ngāroto to her father, who offered her to a rival tribe as a tatau pounamu (peace offering), knowing she was unable to bear children. So this whakatauākī that is often misquoted to support the narcissistic view that people are the most important thing in this world means something completely different.

Some Reflections

Now that I have acquired this knowledge, I am left to ponder on the following questions: how do I apply this knowledge base to my classroom practice? How can I use this knowledge to support the learning and hauora of my ākonga within a kura environment that works rigidly within the Gregorian calendar? How can I use this knowledge to plan for the coming year? I would be keen to try and plan my curriculum, units, lessons, trips, etc., to the maramataka Māori. I feel I need to incorporate this into my conceptual framework, as being an extension of the Whare Tapawhā model. I need to just take the risk and just do it! Tūwhitia te hopo, mairangatia te angitū!

Learning Outcomes

I have learned so much from Matariki this year. The key take-aways from this year’s lesson are: Matariki offers a more fit-for-purpose time-keeping system than its Gregorian counterpart; to listen and observe my surroundings, to see it as an extension of myself; to teu le vā with the environment and astronomical markers by practicing the relational law of tikanga; to apply the holistic well-being model offered by Matariki within my practice; to know the stories of our tūpuna; that people are not the centre of the universe; to use the lunar calendar to plan my lessons; to understand that we must continue to look to our past to help us inform our future survival and continuity. Finally, Matariki has taught me what it is to be descended from ancestors whose knowledge was acquired from our land, sky, oceans, rivers, forests, and cosmos and are recorded in stories, whakataukī, whakatauākī, pepeha, waiata, and whakapapa. These are archives of belonging that are accessible and tangible. I hope to embed the lessons of our ancestors in my daily classroom activities and lessons to enhance and promote the cultural identities of all my tauira.

NGĀ TOHUTORO

Anae, M. (2016). Teu le vā: Samoan Relational Ethics. Knowledge Cultures, 2016, Vol.4(3), pp.117-130.

Durie, M. (1998). Whaiora: Maori health development (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. p. 68–74.

Henare, P. (2016, November 29). Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill — Third Reading [Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)]. Wellington, New Zealand. https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/HansS_20161129_078300000/henare-peeni

Jackson, M. (2021, May 9). Moana Jackson: Decolonisation and the stories in the land. E-Tangata. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/moana-jackson-decolonisation-and-the-stories-in-the-land/#comments

Matamua, R. (2018, November 12). Living by The Stars with Professor Rangi Matamua: Te Hao o Rua [Facebook status update]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/Livingbythestars/videos/te-hao-o-rua/2212164965664513/

Matamua, R. (Writer), Jonathan, M. (Director). (2020, July 16). Beyond Matariki (Episode 1) [Māori Television On Demand series episode]. In H. Tuahine, K. Ross (Producers), Beyond Matariki with Professor Rangi Matamua. Taktix Films; Māori Television.

Matamua, R. (Writer), Jonathan, M. (Director). (2020, July 23). Beyond Matariki (Episode 2) [Māori Television On Demand series episode]. In H. Tuahine, K. Ross (Producers), Beyond Matariki with Professor Rangi Matamua. Taktix Films; Māori Television.

Matamua, R. (Writer), Jonathan, M. (Director). (2020, August 6). Beyond Matariki (Episode 4) [Māori Television On Demand series episode]. In H. Tuahine, K. Ross (Producers), Beyond Matariki with Professor Rangi Matamua. Taktix Films; Māori Television.

Royal, T.C. (2007, September 24). ‘Papatūānuku – the land – Women and land’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/papatuanuku-the-land/page-3 (accessed 10 November 2022)