Matariki may become a public holiday by 2022 – making it the first Māori centric public holiday. Moana gives her take on the new announcement.
Te Ao with MOANA is on every Monday 8pm on Māori Television
Te Ao with MOANA – Matariki may become a public holiday by 2022
Great news. A positively geared mid-winter celebration will be uplifting for the country’s psyche – I feel uplifted already ! Not a fireworks person, but this will be a welcome whanau togetherness time – and put a unique hallmark on our national identity – in this “cold threshold land.”
PM Ardern has made such a wise choice here; it sidelines calls for a Parihaka Day, with its potential for the white man’s burden in the Greens to stir up more racial divisiveness – the last thing we need after a long, hard, lonely winter, and likely more to come. I shall henceforth save my foil wrappings to make stars, and think on the moon…
Matariki means nothing to the vast majority of New Zealanders. This is just another push for Maori values into the lives of mainstream New Zealanders. That Maoris feel strongly about their cultural values is fine. But why do we have to have them forced into our European culture. Employers, just a few years ago, had to pay for an additional weeks leave. How kind it is for Jacinda to bribe the Maori vote using the hard earned money of businesses. She doesn’t pay for this holiday, we do. With all the financial burdens Covid has put on us, we now get this. It easy to be generous with other people’s money, Jacinda.
L Gold I think most NZ ‘ers recognise Matatariki as the Maori New Year and winter solstice. Many Western/ Christian celebrations derived directly from pagan world, as Europeans developed culturally; I sometimes send Chinese friends Chinese New Year cards -hard to locate – and used to give a young Chinese colleague a red envelope of money – it’s the symbols, and symbols socially signpost us.
We are a multi-cultural country and need to learn to live as such. I agree that European culture should not be trampled on, and Maori culture not represented as the apparently official culture of NZ – the Queen and King of Holland, for instance, being made to hongi with a Pākehā PM, I think an imposition – it’s quite an intimate process; a graduation ceremony interrupted by whanau waiata-singing when a Maori gets donged, I think plain rude. We go along with these things for fear of being accused of being racist.
But Matariki is fairly widely acknowledged in the workplace, and in schools, as the start of the Maori Nw Year and a time of hope and new beginnings. If I thought it only applied to Maori, I’d not be comfortable with it, but it is seen as a community occasion, and anything which embraces us as a community, is constructive and positive.
Election bribe ? Who knows ? Much worse happens pre-elections; there are probably people bonking away because Collins is promising $4000 to everyone who has a baby, and that’s not necessarily the smartest idea either.
Cultures all around the world have had, for centuries, festivals marking/celebrating the cycle of the seasons and the natural world in our lives. Think Scandinavian summer solstice festivals, think the meaning of Stonehenge. The list goes on.
We could easily get rid of the provincial anniversary day festivals and QB weekend – all symbols of our colonial past.
The connection to the natural world inherent in Matariki – celebrating and remembering those who’ve passed on, gathering together, and preparing for the new season of planting and growth – what could be more meaningful?
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain that which is to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time of love, and a time of hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
RosieLee Ecclesiastes 3 : 1-8. Framed on the wall by my desk; the only reading for the funeral which I do not wish to have; printed alongside an old gabled American house, water pump out front, galvanised bucket slipping from its handle.
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