WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — When Ngarauru Mako told his family he was canceling Christmas celebrations and celebrating Matariki, the Maori new year holiday that is making a comeback in New Zealand, his children didn’t believe him.
“We grew up with Christmas because it’s something everyone does, but I realised it wasn’t my thing,” said Mako, who is indigenous to New Zealand’s Maori people. “I decided to cancel Christmas, become the Grinch and take on Matariki.”
Now in its third year as a national holiday in New Zealand, Matariki marks the Lunar New Year with the rising of a star cluster known in the Northern Hemisphere as the Pleiades. The holiday’s popularity has soared despite an increasingly divisive political debate about race in New Zealand. The holiday’s growing popularity has created tensions between those who value Indigenous language and culture and a vocal minority who want to tone them down.
“Ever since settlers arrived here, mostly from Britain, we have tried to model our identity on Britain,” said Rangi Matamua, a professor of matauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) at Massey University and a government adviser on Matariki.
“But as we go through the generations, I think Aotearoa New Zealand is beginning to mature in terms of understanding our identity,” he added, referring to the country’s name in both Māori and English.
When New Zealand establishes a national day in 2022, scholars including Matamua believe it will be the first country in the world to recognise an indigenous holiday. But many people don’t know what it is. Still, official statistics show that 51% of the population will mark the day with some kind of action, and that number will rise to 60% in 2023. Matariki falls on a different midwinter day each year according to the Maori lunar calendar. In 2024, it will be officially celebrated on June 28.
The 700-year-old tradition had fallen into disuse in modern times, even among New Zealand’s one million Māori, of New Zealand’s population of five million, but Matariki’s fortunes have changed in the past few decades, with a passionate revival of Māori language, culture and traditions.
“Māori culture has been suppressed for so long. We were on the verge of losing our reo (language) and losing our identity,” said musician Poropiti Rangitaawa, who performed Māori songs at a family Matariki celebration outside the capital Wellington this month. “But through the wishes of our people, our elders, our ancestors, they revived it and now it’s really powerful.”
The Wainuiomata carnival day, where Rangitaawa performed, was one of many events in which people of all New Zealand ethnicities took part in celebrating Matariki, some taking part in a pre-dawn ceremony where food steam was released to “feed the stars” and a list of names was read out in memory of those who had died and those who had been born since the previous celebration.
Memorial spots were dotted around Wellington, in church back rooms and gardens, where visitors posted messages to those who had died – their fathers, aunts, cats and others.
“I’ve only just realised now that Matariki is about the stars and it’s really nice that there’s a star for all the people who have died over the past year,” said Casey Wick, who attended the celebration with her family.
Typical of New Zealand’s indigenous movement, for many people knowledge of the holiday has developed through their children: protests for recognition of the Māori language in the 1970s led to the establishment of Māori-language kindergartens, the first generation of whose graduates can speak the language fluently.
Every primary school in New Zealand now recognises Matariki, and many have celebrated this month with family meals and children singing the names of Matariki’s nine stars to the tune of the Macarena as they walk home.
“I learned more about Matariki from my mother than I could ever teach her,” said Liana Childs, whose 9-year-old daughter, Akailia, perfectly recited the names of the stars in the Matariki constellation. Childs said that although her family is not Maori, they learned about the Maori seasons, which determine when to plant and hunt.
“I think it’s brought us even closer as a family,” she said.
However, the political climate surrounding Māori language and culture is complex.
While the Māori language is now commonly used in conversation, it has its critics. Matariki was established as a national day under New Zealand’s previous centre-left government to encourage the country to embrace Māori culture. But the government was often criticised for doing too little to address the dire economic, health and justice problems that took hold for Māori after New Zealand was colonised in the 19th century.
The change of government last October marked the start of a new era for Matariki. The parties that lead the current centre-right coalition support the day, but one of its coalition partners does not. The government has also promised to repeal some of the Māori recognition policies passed by the previous government, abolishing the Māori Health Authority which gave priority to indigenous New Zealanders who die younger than non-Māori, reversing moves to give government agencies Māori names (some have already reverted to English names), and halting plans for co-management of public services with Māori tribes.
One of the ruling parties has sparked fresh debate, arguing that New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi – signed in 1840 between the Maori and the British Crown – has a modern interpretation that gives excessive rights to Maori. Rumours of a treaty review have sparked protests.
“Governments come and go,” Professor Matamua said. “Matariki existed before there was a government and will continue to exist after the current government.”
Matamua said Māori language and culture were nearly wiped out because previous politicians opposed expression of the language and culture, but in a country where many are now passionate about it, any government that tries to curb the celebrations will learn “it’s probably going to be very hard to put the genie back in the bottle”.
At the Matariki festival in Wainuiomata, Tash Simpson and friends stood at a stall that combined Māori and Kenyan crafts.
“We are stronger now, our people are more knowledgeable now,” she said of political threats against Māori, “but now we know what’s coming and we’re prepared.”
