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.

They discuss Matariki as it’s marked today and as it was observed in traditional Māori times and some ways people can observe the occasion.

Kia Pākiki Canterbury is a monthly podcast presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Transcript

Tom Goulter

Dr Emma Maurice of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga is a learning advisor at the University of Canterbury’s Academic Skills Centre. She completed her PhD in Indigenous philosophy in 2024, and her work specialises in Māori and Indigenous epistemologies. Emma, we’re here today to talk about Matariki. Assuming zero knowledge, what can you tell us about Matariki?

Dr Emma Maurice

First of all, I just want to mihi to the haukāinga, Ngāi Tūāhuriri, mana whenua of the rohe that we’re sitting in, and I want to be able to situate myself that I’m an Indigenous philosopher from the Hawke’s Bay region. So the kōrero I’m about to have today is kōrero for the haukāinga, Ngāi Tūāhuriri. So for Matariki, 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. 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.

Tom Goulter

What does Matariki mean to you personally Emma?

Dr Emma Maurice

Matariki, for me, is not just a cultural event in a calendar. 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.

Tom Goulter

And Matariki has particular meanings here in Te Waipounamu, the South Island, doesn’t it?

Emma Maurice

It does. So 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, and 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. We have the Tītī Islands in autumn. Tuna are preserved. There’s deepsea fishing in winter. There’s whitebaiting in spring, and then there’s in summer. So each whānau resource or territory will have specialist knowledge for that particular resource. One of the, I guess, more well known are the Tītī Islands or muttonbirding, which is a delicacy down here, and that is a particular season, and particular whānau have the resource rights to be able to harvest those tītī.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So there are a lot of celestial things other than stars – things like comets, meteors. How did Māori interpret these?

Dr Emma Maurice

That’s a great question, and not something that is from my skillset. But as an Indigenous philosopher, I can imagine that seeing a one-off event would’ve been observed and then the seasonal signs around it. So were the kōwhai flowers flowering at that time? Were they early or were they late? Was the tuna migration running really well, or were there low amounts of tuna that were migrating? So one environmental tohu or sign on its own isn’t necessarily something. It’s how it fits into the whole pattern of things.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So what’s happening around you down here on the surface, if you like, is reflected perhaps with some of the things that might be happening up there, but the pattern needs to be a bit clearer to be able to make a connection, if you like.

Dr Emma Maurice

Yeah. There’s also what’s happening in the community or your whānau. Is someone being born? Has someone just passed? Was there a storm event? So yeah, environmental knowledge was also human knowledge as well, because it’s an interconnected cycle.

Tom Goulter

What happened at Matariki in traditional Māori times?

Dr Emma Maurice

Again, it wasn’t just one particular moment in time. It was over a series of days or weeks, and 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.

Tom Goulter

How do you connect all of this back to your study of Indigenous philosophy?

Dr Emma Maurice

That’s a wonderful question, thank you. I guess for an Indigenous philosopher, it’s about curiosity. I’m naturally quite a curious person. I am interested in how we came to be in the situation that we’re in. 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 in ways that we possibly could. And so 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. I think there are some parallels that we can draw, but obviously we live in a very different time.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

People tend to be a little disconnected from stars and so on. Physically just because it’s getting harder to see them in terms of lights and cities and –

Tom Goulter

A theme of this episode.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Yeah. Satellites up in space and all that sort of stuff. So how do you think we can encourage people to –

Tom Goulter

Keep that connection alive?

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Yeah, or rekindle that connection. Or have you seen that as being an issue? Like is it something that you’ve noticed in general – that people are probably less connected to things like the stars than perhaps they might’ve been?

Dr Emma Maurice

I would say generally yes, because we’re very urbanised, and many of our people in our communities don’t have access to dark sky. I will do a little plug for the Canterbury Astronomical Society, and they’re out near West Melton, and they’re a most wonderful taonga resource, and they do public viewings at night. They have a range of different telescopes set up. They bring school groups through and whānau groups. You can go out on your own and make a new friend. They also do viewings around different lunar eclipses. So I think most recently we had a blood moon. It was a full lunar eclipse. That’s, I think, the last one until 2028. So being able to go and use their telescopes is a wonderful thing to do, especially you get to stay up late kids. The other beautiful thing that we have down here in Te Waipounamu is we have a very close proximity to Tekapo, which is a reserve for the dark skies. So being able to go down there and even if it’s in the daytime, they have a wonderful building and resource that you can go in, and they’ll explain the stars in the southern hemisphere. So that’s also really beautiful. And the third resource that I will give to the listeners is that there is a place known as Kura Tāwhiti. We might know it as Castle Hill. Yeah, and it’s just an incredible natural reserve, which was part of ceremonial practices and ritual practices for Māori in Te Waipounamu. So 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.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

This is Castle Hill.

Dr Emma Maurice

Yes.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

It’s a fantastic spot. There’s a great fossil site there where you can actually see, literally find shells on the side of the road up in the mountains, just where they’re getting uplifted in the beaches.

Tom Goulter

Wow.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So I find it a very special place just from that point of view.

Dr Emma Maurice

And it’s just kind of there, you know?

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Yeah, it’s just there, like literally on the side of the road.

Tom Goulter

How will your whānau be marking Matariki Emma?

Dr Emma Maurice

So we really like to get together and have food. We love our food. And there are no rules with the food. We can have pudding first if we want to. Or double puddings. One thing I really like to do is to spend the – we have a 3-day celebration, so the first day is to acknowledge those who have passed, 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. 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. So friends, family, everyone brings a plate with food on the plate, and we share in that food and share in the presence that we have, yeah.

Tom Goulter

What would you like listeners to take away from this kōrero?

Dr Emma Maurice

I’d really like everyone to spend 2 or 3 days over Matariki sharing food with their friends and whānau and their neighbours. Sometimes we don’t knock on the door of our neighbours. We don’t know our neighbours. And you never know, there might just be someone who has no friends, which would be a sad situation. It would just be nice to share that food. I know that Tūranga in the library have incredible events that they hold through the week of Matariki. I know that the Christchurch City Council also have festival events. There are markets for the people who like markets. And there are also, if you go out to the Canterbury Astronomical Society, you can go and see the stars there, so yeah. Also, Ngāi Tahu, if you go down to the Dark Skies Project, yeah. There’s some amazing things that you can do out there. So share food, stay up late, hope that it’s not cloudy.

Tom Goulter

Now, Emma, the question that we ask everybody on this podcast is what’s the last thing that made you curious?

Dr Emma Maurice

So as a philosopher, I study the philosophy of language, so I really enjoy language and I’ve been listening to old texts. So there’s been some really lovely little nuggets of knowledge that have come out for me there. But I’ll hold off on telling everyone about that until next time.

Tom Goulter

A teaser for your next interview. That’s wonderful. How fascinating.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

That’s right. We need to get you back, Emma. You’ve left us on a cliffhanger there.

Tom Goulter

That’s right.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Excellent.

Tom Goulter

Thank you so much for your time today Emma.

Dr Emma Maurice

Oh, thank you both so much. Thank you listeners.

Acknowledgements

Tom Goulter
Associate Professor Adrian Paterson
Dr Emma Maurice

Kia Pākiki Canterbury logo, © Plains Media/Royal Society Te Apārangi (Canterbury Branch)

Images of Tom Goulter and Adrian Paterson, © Royal Society Te Apārangi (Canterbury Branch)

Image of Dr Emma Maurice, © Emma Maurice

Matariki (Pleiades) star cluster, rights: Fraser Gunn

Meteor, Jacek Halicki, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Hāngī pit, Sarah Stewart, CC-BY 2.0 

Castle Hill Kura Tāwhiti, CC-BY 4.0 Mike Dickison