Kia Pākiki Canterbury – Emma Maurice, Indigenous philosopher
Dr Emma Maurice (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga) is an Indigenous philosopher working at Canterbury University. She spoke with the podcast Kia Pākiki Canterbury about Matariki, some ways it’s marked in Te Waipounamu South Island and what the occasion means to her.
Kia Pākiki Canterbury – Matariki
In this Kia Pākiki Canterbury podcast, Science Communicator Tom Goulter and co-host Associate Professor Adrian Paterson from Lincoln University interview Dr Emma Maurice from Canterbury University.
Select here to view video transcript and copyright information.
Matariki – not just a calendar date
“Matariki, for me, is not just a cultural event in a calendar,” Emma tells Kia Pākiki Canterbury’s hosts, Science Communicator Tom Goulter and Associate Professor Adrian Paterson. “It gives us space to acknowledge those who have passed in the year previous. It also gives us space to set intentions for the year that’s coming, and it’s a space also for whānau and kin and community to come together and share food. I like to think of Matariki as a series of days or weeks rather than just one moment.”
Emma’s whānau have a 3-day celebration to mark Matariki. “The first day is to acknowledge those who have passed,” she says, “not necessarily just the people who are in your immediate whānau. It could be people in the wider community or globally, just acknowledging over the last 12 months those who are no longer with us. And part of Matariki is that the constellation will come down and dip, and the souls or the wairua or the essence or the being – or insert your preferred concept – will be gathered by the waka of Matariki and taken up into the stars. So that will be day one.”
“Day two would be about setting your intentions for the next 12 months,” Emma continues. “Maybe it’s a goal that you have or an intention to be more generous in rush-hour traffic with side streets and drivers or perhaps holding the door open for someone. It could be as benign as that, or it could be interacting with your community, doing hauora, working on yourself or uplifting your whānau. And then the third day is really just feasting.”
Matariki in te ao Māori
Matariki, in traditional Māori times, “was over a series of days or weeks,” says Emma. “One of the more well-known ceremonies was the hautapu ceremony. And so a hāngī would be made, and the smell of the food would be offered up into the stars to feed the stars, to say thank you for the harvest that had just come. So as Matariki is at the end of the harvest season, it was a koha, I suppose, to say thank you to ngā atua.”
Hāngī
A hāngī is a traditional Māori method of cooking food. Meats like pork, chicken or kaimoana and vegetables such as potato, kūmara and cabbage are placed in a hole in the ground on top of fire-heated rocks and buried for several hours until cooked.
Emma explains how her study of Indigenous philosophy encourages her to be curious about problems facing our world and ways we might learn from the past to address these.
“I think there are some things that are happening in our world today that are less than uplifting and aren’t enabling humans to flourish,” she says. “I like to look to the past, to history, and see in challenging moments, how did our ancestors – not just my ancestors, but the ancestors of all of us – how did they navigate those situations? What were the ceremonies or rituals or daily practices that they had in their lives and perhaps that can give us a little clue to the agency that they exerted.”
Matariki (Pleiades) star cluster
Wayfinders have used the stars as a compass for millennia.
Matariki in Te Waipounamu
“In the maramataka, Matariki alongside Puaka and the Southern Cross and also the lunar phases, the wind, the birds, the fish, the sea, all of it together is a predictive system of environmental knowledge,” says Emma. “It’s something that’s been observed over many generations, and that knowledge has been passed down. So when we’re able to sit with intention and observe, we can come to great knowledge and understandings. So it’s a seasonal cycle.”
She says there are ways of marking Matariki that are particular to Te Waipounamu and to Waitaha Canterbury. “We are on the southern eastern seaboard down here in Te Waipounamu, which means that the constellation of Matariki actually rise a little bit later down here than they do in the North Island,” Emma explains. “So the particular star that is of greatest importance in Te Waipounamu is Puaka. That is the tohu. So when we see Puaka rise in the morning on the eastern seaboard, that’ll be the indication to Te Waipounamu, to Ngāi Tahu, that signals the beginning of the Māori New Year.”
Emma says that nowadays it’s common for people not to have much connection to the stars. “We’re very urbanised,” she says, “and many of our people in our communities don’t have access to dark sky.”
Stargazing
Astronomy consultant Becky Bateman points out features of the night sky to tour members. Becky is part of the Martinborough Dark Sky Society in Wairarapa. The society worked to have the area recognised as an International Dark Sky Reserve – they were successful in 2023.
Emma points out, though, that there are places to reconnect with the stars such as astronomical societies and Dark Sky Reserves like that in Tekapo. The Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve is the largest such reserve in the southern hemisphere (for more kōrero and information about Dark Sky Places, listen to Kia Pākiki Canterbury’s July episode). “Even if it’s in the daytime, they have a wonderful building and resource that you can go in,” says Emma, “and they’ll explain the stars in the southern hemisphere. So that’s also really beautiful.”
Emma says another special place in Te Waipounamu for observing Matariki is Kura Tāwhiti Castle Hill, located about 90 minutes’ drive from Ōtautahi Christchurch. “It’s just an incredible natural reserve, which was part of ceremonial practices and ritual practices for Māori in Te Waipounamu,” Emma explains. “It was a place of wānanga. It was a place where you could go and witness Matariki rising and other celestial events. So it has a deep spiritual significance, and if you just go there and you’ll be able to feel the wairua. So I’d definitely put that on your bucket list if you’re an outdoors person who likes a walk.”
Related content
Te Kāhui o Matariki – introduction – curates our Matariki resources in one location!
The Matariki star cluster – using the Matariki star cluster as a context for learning can cover many different subjects.
Picturebooks for Matariki – teacher PLD featuring picturebook expert Associate Professor Nicola Daly, co-director of the Waikato Picturebook Research Unit at the University of Waikato.
Te Kāhui o Matariki and the environment – the Hub’s Andrea Soanes and Angela Schipper unpack ideas connected to Te Kāhui o Matariki and Environment Aotearoa 2022.
Naming the whetū in Te Kāhui o Matariki activity – can you name all nine Matariki stars?
In the podcast, Emma mentions seasonal foods and resources. Mahinga kai – natural resources that sustain life explores food and resource-gathering traditions practised by Ngāi Tahu whānau in Te Waipounamu.
Defending the dark is a Connected article with links to our Dark Sky Reserves.
Loss of the Night and Globe at Night are citizen science projects that encourage ākonga to observe the night skies.
Useful links
The appearance of the Matariki Cluster – Christchurch City Council resource about the stars of Matariki.
The importance of Matariki – audio of Ngāi Tahu elder Rakiihia (Rik) Tau explaining the importance of Matariki in terms of what it traditionally meant for the life of southern Māori.
Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve – find out more about the southern hemisphere’s largest Dark Sky Place.
International Dark Sky Places – what does it mean to be certified a Dark Sky Place?
Acknowledgement
This interview was excerpted from an episode of Kia Pākiki Canterbury, a monthly podcast about science, technology and humanities presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Kia Pākiki logo
Kia Pākiki Canterbury is a monthly podcast about science, technology and the humanities presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
