In the hours before dawn on Friday’s crisp winter morning, thousands of New Zealanders rose in the dark, donned woollen hats and scarves and ventured outdoors to scan the eastern horizon for the appearance of a cluster of stars.
For many, it marked only the first or second time they had participated in the observance of Matariki – an annual celebration with a long history for the country’s Māori people, but a relatively brief one for most others in Aotearoa.
Often referred to as the Māori lunar new year, the festival of Matariki marks the mid-winter rising period of its namesake constellation – commonly known as the Pleiades – and signifies a time of beginnings and endings, coming together, remembrance of the dead, and traditionally, the planning of crops and planting.
So far, the public face of the holiday has been preoccupied with star-gazing. But as Matariki comes to prominence in New Zealand society – bolstered by its status, since 2022, as a legally enshrined public holiday – Māori leaders say they are hopeful the country can learn more of the celebration’s ancient roots, in which the positions of the moon and stars are the foundation for understanding almost every aspect of the natural world.
“This knowledge system explains weather patterns, understanding environments, planting patterns, and understanding nature and the movements of fish and eels,” says Rereata Makiha, who is a specialist in mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge), and served on the government’s Matariki advisory group.
A quiet resurgence of Māori custom
The establishment of the national holiday comes at a time when Indigenous sciences, astronomy, and environmentalism are experiencing a renaissance in New Zealand, reversing decades of dismissal and scorn of the subjects as rooted in myth. Since the 1970s, a slow and quiet resurgence of the customs among Māori – who are 15% of New Zealand’s population – prompted a call to formally recognise Matariki.
After an attempt to enshrine the celebration in New Zealand law failed in 2009, the elevation of Matariki to a government-endorsed festival a year ago has provoked questions for New Zealanders about how to celebrate it – and for Māori analysts about how its true meaning can be preserved.
“It’s challenging, because you’re up against the northern hemisphere traditions that were brought down here many, many years ago,” says Makiha. But the counter-cultural force of mātauranga Māori has outlasted attempts to destroy it before, he adds.
When the British colonised Aotearoa, “heaps” of the astronomical and scientific knowledge that brought his Polynesian ancestors to New Zealand by celestial navigation was lost, Makiha says. “Our books and teachings only survived because our old people were stubborn enough to move them around to different places so they couldn’t be tracked or found.”
Now, many New Zealanders are hungry to know more about the Māori understanding of the country’s land, skies, and seas, research suggests. A poll of 1,000 New Zealanders conducted in 2022 for the national museum, Te Papa, showed 50% of people took action to mark the holiday in its first official year – most commonly star-gazing or attendance at community and family events.
Ancestral way of thinking gives ‘permission to disconnect’
In New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, this year an extensive programme of activities for Matariki this month included a series of workshops about arts, Indigenous healing, space, and time – all using principles of mātauranga Māori.
“So many Indigenous cultures across the world follow a lunar and star system, and the sun is only one of those elements,” says Mihi Tibble, who led workshops and is a specialist in maramataka, the Māori environmental calendar.
“It’s place-based,” she adds. “A lot of our ancestral knowledge comes from understanding your relationship with the environment around you.”
The ancestral way of thinking about time and space has been liberating for Tibble, she says, and she hopes to help other New Zealanders access it.
“No flower blooms 24/7, but these days we have 24/7 access to the internet,” she says. “In teaching maramataka we give ourselves permission to disconnect and we ask, what are the natural rhythms of our time now?”
Such teachings could easily become watered-down, meaningless platitudes – reminiscent of western “wellness” culture – if Matariki becomes commercialised in the same way as New Zealand’s other holidays have, Makiha and Tibble acknowledge.
But after the fight to establish the holiday nationwide, Makiha says iwi (tribes) throughout the country are eager to preserve its unique customs and traditions – which vary by region – and prevent the “standardisation” that he says government involvement threatens.
In Hokianga, near the top of the North Island, where Makiha lives, the Matariki constellation is not visible in June and Māori search instead for the appearance of the star Takarua (Sirius) in the sky, before gathering for a spirited ceremony to “get rid of the rubbish” in their lives and making plans for the new.
The system of mātauranga Māori is so local that even the number and length of the seasons varies by region. In New Zealand, an island nation that experiences wildly varying weather, Makiha says an understanding of the Indigenous calendar has helped his iwi to better explain and predict an increasingly volatile climate, and led to innovation in crops and fisheries.
The fledgling recognition of Māori sciences has not been universally embraced. This month some teachers criticised the inclusion of mātauranga Māori in a leaked draft of New Zealand’s proposed new science curriculum for schools. Meanwhile, detractors of te reo Māori – an official language of New Zealand – have in recent weeks criticised proposals to make the country’s road signs bilingual. Both policies have also drawn support.
Often fraught debates on such matters play out on social media, where Sonny Ngatai – an advocate for te reo who runs a Māori promotion and production company – is attempting to raise awareness of and participation in Matariki among “every day” New Zealanders in a culturally sensitive and accurate way.
He believes it’s possible – in the face of a sometimes uncivil public discourse. This year, he has partnered with New Zealand’s Māori Language Commission to encourage other social media users in learning a kaikōhau, or expression of “hope and good vibes” – the perfect fusion of traditional and modern, he says.
His message, he says, is that Matariki is “for everyone to reclaim” – not only Māori.
“My dream would be that 20 years from now, New Zealand has made the bold decision to change our time and our seasons to the June of Matariki,” Ngatai adds.
“I hope we’ll say happy new year not on 1 January, but when Matariki rises.”
