Matariki, a Government Program est 2001
June 24, 2022
By NZB3
Had you asked anyone in New Zealand prior to this century what Matariki was they would not be able to tell you. At best, they would recognise it as a place name or the Maori word for the Pleiades cluster. Thanks to about 20 years of propaganda all our school children now know more about Matariki than about Captain Cook or Guy Fawkes. This is a 180 degree reversal.
In 2001 the Maori Language Commission (using the cover of Te Papa and Ministry of Education least there be any blow-back. Safety in numbers and all that…)¹ decided to bureaucratically conjure an event that never existed. They were apparently undecided about calling it Aotearoa Pacific New Year or Matariki.
Similar words to Matariki occur in most Polynesian languages. Hawaii has Matariki too but the call it something different. “Why,” asks the government of Labour 5.0, “shouldn’t New Zealand get in on that?”
Matariki actually falls on different days according to the different Maori tribes. Much in the same way that they had their own ways and dialects, Matariki is a Psudo-Maori homogenisation imposed on us all as if ‘Maori’ were a monolith. Each individual Maori tribe ought to be allowed to revive their own traditional festivities rather than be subject to the ways (and language) of, say, Nga Puhi in the north. I mention this tribe because they ‘lucked out’ in being proximal to the writer of the Maori dictionary which has come to dominate and indeed be called ‘Maori’ as if there were no other contending dialects/languages.
There is no one Maori language; It’s not a monolith!
There isn’t even one Maori culture or one Maori calendar or even one Matariki.
Government programmes always achieve the opposite of what they set out to do. They tear out healthy living turf that is community and replace it with dead astroturf that is bureaucracy and networks.
Of course as an Anarchist I’m all for the individual and their tribe or social group choosing their own days and own calendar. No need for an all powerful state to dictate when we are to remember, when we are to rest, when we are to celebrate, when we are to mourn. Yet that’s what the NeoMaori Matariki has come to stand for- another attempt to enforce someone else’s values on the population.
Very little to do with Maori Culture or history. Matariki is A State Odyssey from 2001 that is evolving and growing like a cancer. Each year it is propagandised to us the message evolves and changes. The title Matariki has become settled on, it has become more refined lately as a local event rather than a monolith. It has taken over Guy Fawkes Night for some localities now. There are now Matariki Awards being handed out for Maori excellence only, seemingly in direct competition with the New Years Honours as if they were only for white people. Bring on the apartheid?
—
1 Parekura Horomia speech; Beehive.gov
Cross-posted from Anarchist History of New Zealand
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