Thinking of Fiji at Mätäriki

June 26 2000

Kia ora,

A reflection on the situation in Fiji at Mätäriki ... "a new beginning, a regeneration, for our brothers and sisters in Fiji" ?

We continue to receive articles and comments on the situation in Fiji, too numerous to post every one to our email lists, so if you want to keep up to date with the material we are receiving, you can check out the Fiji index page at: http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/fiji.htm

We are receiving a lesser amount of material re the situation in the Solomon Islands, what we are getting is posted at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/solomon.htm

Both index pages are being updated twice a week at present.

Te Karere Ipurangi - Mäori News Online

Sunday, 25th June 2000

Mätäriki, the Mäori new year
by Ross Nepia Himona

On Friday night, Mäori in Central Wellington gathered at the Mäori owned Paua Bar to celebrate Mätäriki, the Mäori new year.

Te Huihui o Mätäriki is the constellation of Pleiades, and its rising is widely celebrated in the Pacific, where Mätäriki is also known as Mata-ali'i, Makahiki, and other variants. There is also some variation from place to place as to whether it is the heliacal (dawn) rising, or the evening rising, that is celebrated. In some places in Aotearoa New Zealand it is not Mätäriki at all, but the heliacal rising of Puangi (Rigel), that heralds the new year. In my tribes we celebrate the dawn rising of Mätäriki.

The dawn rising occurs in June, close to the winter solstice. However the evening rising celebrated in much of the Pacific occurs in November/December. It seems that here in Aotearoa we long ago changed our celebration to suit our colder climate, and perhaps to gain a six month lead on our brothers and sisters across Te Moana-nui-A-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.

Traditionally Mätäriki was greeted by lamentation for those who had passed on since the last celebration, and by singing, dancing, joy, festivity and feasting, to mark the regeneration of the world for yet another round of seasons, in an eternal parade of passing seasons.

On Friday I silently hoped that Mätäriki would bring not just an end to the ordeal of the hostages in Suva, but a new beginning, a regeneration, for our brothers and sisters in Fiji. As that drawn out crisis stutters to an end, there does seem some hope that the hostages will be released in this auspicious season, that the lamentations may be cried, and that celebration and festivity may begin again.

Mätäriki is a time also to pause and meditate with reverence upon the wonder of the thousands of years that the indigenous peoples of the Pacific have bathed in the healing and life-giving radiance of Mätäriki, throughout the whole of the peopling of that vast ocean. A time to look back over thousands of years, and reflect upon the relative insignificance of ones own fleeting lifetime in that parade of lifetimes.

A time to stand back and place into perspective, within an historical record of thousands of years, this short five-week crisis in Fiji; perhaps itself heralding the beginning of an end to a slightly longer 126 year crisis, occasioned by the Cession of Fiji to the British in 1874.

It is too easy to be caught up in the European remembrance of time in the Pacific, spanning a mere two centuries or more; and to adopt their time-starved sense of urgency, panic and disaster when harmony is temporariy disrupted. We Pacific peoples ought to remember that it is our sense of time and history that matters in this region, not theirs, and that we have survived thousands of similar events, including the devastation of colonisation; and we are still here.

As we gaze upon Mätäriki in this new Mäori year, let us remember that Mätäriki has looked down upon us for many thousands of years, and will for thousands of years to come.

This article is also available at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rhimona/karere/fiji039.htm

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