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'We can begin to plant kūmara':

I remember being woken up around midnight by one of my grandmothers, Mini Tupara.“E Witsh, get up.”I was a young boy, 9 at the time, and this memory comes from the early 1950s. Mum and Dad lived in Gisborne, so I must have been visiting Nani Mini at Waituhi. As I dressed I could see outside the window people carrying lamps and walking up the hill opposite, where Tākitimu marae was.Link to article: 'We can begin to plant kūmara': Witi Ihimaera on his favourite Matariki metaphor | ...

No-one wants to see a ‘Matariki Big Mac’:

With Matariki around the corner, Māori cultural advisers, academics, and the Government are warning businesses to avoid commercialising the mid-winter holiday.Skye Kimura is chief executive of Tātou, a Māori cultural marketing and communications agency.Recently, Kimura became concerned at a number of client briefs asking the agency to “leverage Matariki” as a marketing opportunity, and she decided to do something about it.“We are trying to tell people that Matariki is not a selling oppo...

Take Five:

The new awareness among non-Māori of the Matariki mid-winter celebrations is also a reminder of how strongly people of the past related to the natural world.In these days when atomic clocks keep time with an accuracy of about a second every 100 million years, most of the recurring patterns in the night sky are unknown to many of us.Matariki is a chance to correct that in a small way, even if our modern understanding of what we’re looking at is markedly different to the concepts our ...

Matariki night market

Timaru’s main street will come alive with buskers, kapa haka performances, fire dancers, light installations and more than 60 food and craft stalls for the second annual Matariki night market.Organised by the Timaru CBD Group and Timaru Artisan Farmers Market, the event follows a successful market in 2021 when more than 2000 people attended the festivities.Organisers hope to build on that success this year, and CBD Group experience and enhancement working group chairperson Tim Black said ...

Matariki at Britomart

Celebrate Matariki with a range of activations taking place over a few days at Britomart, including kapa haka, all-day music, food trucks and markets. See what's happening and when below.Kapa Haka by Te Wharekura o Hoani Waititi Marae | Takutai Square, June 22 & 29, 12.15pm and 1.15pmEnjoy dynamic, live kapa haka performances in celebration of Matariki. The champion kapa haka performers from Hoani Waititi Marae bring two show-stopping lunchtime kapa haka performances to Britomart. The kapa ...

Air New Zealand to launch mixed reality

National carrier Air New Zealand is launching a mixed reality Matariki exhibition in which attendees will be able to take to the sky without leaving the room.The celebration of the Māori New Year will be held at Canterbury Museum on June 18 and 19, followed by Te Puia in Rotorua from June 22.The airline's senior cultural development manager Jahmaine Cummings-Hodge is excited to take people on the journey using Magic Leap headsets that integrate the real world into the virtual.Pou Tikanga, Pou P...

Māori All Blacks

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Māori author Ataria Sharman

There are fierce Māori warriors with sharpened teeth and huge pitch-black eyes. Also, a friendly moa, a giant eagle, a tribe of kea. We meet Maui’s grumpy grandmother, an enchanted dog, a terrifying sorcerer intent on world domination.Hine and the Tohunga Portal, $25, is the first book by Ataria Sharman (Tapuika, Ngāpuhi) - a pacy fantasy adventure shortlisted in the Best First Book category at the upcoming New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.Sharman has a master of arts in...

Marae invites community

Toi Maori (Maori art), local purakau (stories) and the cosmos are set to converge at the Bluff marae, under the Matariki stars.During Matariki, Te Rau Aroha Marae in Bluff will host a four-day event, from June 23-26, to celebrate the significant time for Maori with the Murihiku community.Matariki is the Maori name for the cluster of stars also known as Pleiades, which rises in June and signals the Maori New Year.Project leader Jay Coote said it was a time to remember those who had died since las...

‘Portal to the old world’:

As the crisp morning dawns, tangata whenua and the surrounding community will gather at the world’s only traditional māra kai replica, known as Te Parapara. The food garden will be Waikato’s launching site for Matariki celebrations during a dawn ceremony on Friday, ahead of Aotearoa’s first Matariki public holiday. For Ngāti Wairere researcher, Wiremu Puke, Te Parapara acts as a portal from past to present and a legacy project of his late father, Hare Puke. He sa...

Matariki 2022:

A Māori entity is celebrating Matariki by showing off some of Aotearoa's most unique products and services at an event starting this weekend.The Top 50 Māori Products in Aotearoa showcase will kick off tomorrow.Ngahere Communities - made up of nine wahine staff members - was approached by powerhouse online shopping platform Shopify when it heard Matariki was going to be a public holiday in New Zealand.Chief executive Mel Tautalanoa said: "Shopify is a Canadian company [that] has genu...

Calls for wider rollout of

The partnership, which ran for a year, saw a police officer, paramedic and mental health clinician attend emergency mental health callouts in the same vehicle. A "first of its kind" in New Zealand, the co-response team saw a reduction in the number of people being taken straight to a police station or emergency department. Calls for the partnership to continue in Wellington and nationally come after figures obtained by 1News under the Official Information Act show an 87% jump in t...

Hongi to Hāngī:

Ever wondered why Māori hongi, or why women sit behind men in a pōwhiri? A new series from TVNZ aims to demystify te ao Māori while also showcasing the beauty of Māori culture along the way. Hongi to Hāngī and Everything in Between is hosted by TVNZ’s Tamati Rimene-Sproat.Link to video: Hongi to Hāngī: New series to demystify te ao Māori (1news.co.nz)...

Designer off to Europe

But their mother and Kahuwai clothing designer Amber Bridgman will have none of that when her sons model her latest catalogue of clothing and other designers’ garments at the Paris Fashion Show and London Pacific Fashion Week in September.She said modelling was not new to them. They had been modelling her clothing since they were 18 months old.Despite their experience, "the boys" were pretty humble."They’re your typical 18-year-olds who finished year 13 at King’s High School last year. The...

‘We’re invisible’:

Every time Marylou Fonda goes to the doctor’s office, she’s confronted with a question she can’t answer: are there health risks in your family history?“I don’t have a history of anything. My history starts with me,” the Fort St. James, B.C., resident told Global News.“Sometimes it’s downright traumatizing when you’re in a doctor’s office…. You have to say ‘no’ because you don’t know.”Link to videos and article: ‘We’re invisible’: Amid residential sch...

How one iwi is navigating farming

As a kid, my dad used to pull kōwhitiwhiti (watercress) out of the ditches around Tuahiwi Pā, between Rangiora and Kaiapoi, north of Christchurch.You just boil it up and eat it, he’d say. Cheap Ngāi Tahu meal.He doesn’t do that any more. Not because he’s pushing 60, he’d be right in there if he spotted any watercress growing in the waterways. It’s because we’d get sick if we’re not careful where we harvest from. We’d swim in there and catch fish over there, Dad would say, indi...

New experience as kids 'muck in'

In a flurry of vegetable peeling, a production line of school children excitedly prepare for what is for most of them their first hāngī.It is an altogether new experience for the majority of the pupils at Turitea School, at Linton, and the reason why principal Troy Duckworth encouraged them to engage in the noho mārae at Te Hotu Manawa o Rangitāne o Manawatū on Maxwells Line in Palmerston North.With assistance from Raymond Rolfe, Māori nutrition and physical activity coordinator at Best Ca...

The marae defended by flood walls:

Zak Horomia (Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngāti Kahukuranui, Ngāti Hau) remembers when people could swim, fish and eel in the Uawa river.He remembers when 40 families lived in Mangatuna and lush vegetable gardens peppered the landscape.The time before heavy rain became an ever-present threat.The effects of climate change are felt keenly by the people of Hinemaurea ki Mangatuna Marae, which lies about 10 kilometres north of Tolaga Bay on the East Coast.Link to video and article: The marae defended...

William Waiirua encourages any adoption of te reo Māori

It comes after Kiri Allan, who was until this week Conservation Minister, was forced to clarify an email sent from a Department of Conservation (DoC) manager - which claimed she wanted English words used in most circumstances.The email, which was subsequently posted on Twitter, said Allan didn't want to see te reo words used unless there was no English equivalent and the whole document was in te reo. But Allan quickly clarified the email was "very wrong"."[It is] an incorrect arti...

Amy Licis, MD:

During the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (SLEEP) 2022 Annual Meeting Amy Licis, MD, MSCI, Associate Professor, Pediatric Neurology and Sleep Medicine, Washington University Department of Neurology, gave a presentatgave a presentationion titled "Tired and Wired: Sleep in Children with Autism or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)".In an interview with HCPLive, Licis discussed the data behind her presentation as well as the significance of addressing&...

Pātaka's Ana Sciascia on art,

Ana Sciascia is the new director/kaihautū of Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua City’s premier art gallery. Sciascia took over from Reuben Friend in April.Tell us a little about yourself.I was raised in Porirua in a family with a deep value for the arts and various arts connections. Professionally I have worked in the arts and politics – both the arts of politics and the politics of art. I’m not an art for art’s sake kind of person. For me, it’s about our connection and relations...

Reading the signs:

It might seem counterintuitive that in 2022, with the vast knowledge available to us at our fingertips, student performance in the building-blocks of education is worsening. But in Aotearoa, that's exactly what's happening. Since the late-2000s, the performance of New Zealand students in international standardised tests measuring numeracy, literacy, and science performance has been slowly but steadily declining. The drops are rarely so dramatic in any given year as to ring alarm b...

Step forward as students

Students at Christ's College in Christchurch can now finally wear ie faitaga to school instead of grey trousers.It is described as a more formal version of a lava lava. The garment is called ie faitaga in Samoan, tupenu in Tongan and sulu in Fijian.The school's principal said the addition to the official College uniform could be worn by Pasifika students in place of their trousers throughout the year.Student Jayden Sa, 17, grew up in a hard-working Samoan family; he is a New Zealander but is pro...

Worries over teen vaping

Highlands Intermediate has disciplined 17 students so far this year for vaping on school grounds - which has been legally prohibited since last year.Principal Mark Luff was so worried about an increase in the number of students caught vaping or vaping equipment that he sent out a general alert to parents."We're not seeing huge numbers, but it's just a consistent flow of it and we're realistic we're not the only school in New Zealand experiencing this."We know when we talk to colleagues it's happ...

The Hui meets academic who uncovered his family's involvement in invasion of Parihaka

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