Usually beginning with identifying a mountain and then a body of water through to ancestral links, the captain of their ancestral waka (large canoe that their people came to Aotearoa in), the iwi or larger tribal group that they belong to, their ancestral lands and marae (ancestral meeting house), their important family names and finally the individual's name.
In the graphic beside, I used a website called www.pepeha.com to draft out my pepeha and it also provides the Maori and English version that I would be able to recite.
This is usually used in times when people are first meeting each other in Maori hui (meetings) but lately I've found that in many other meetings people have adopted this way of introducing themselves to a group even if they aren't Maori.
What is interesting about it is that not only is it an interesting way of introducing yourself within culturally acceptable Maori terms but it also links you to your ancestors through the identified markers that are shared. It also allows the audience to connect with the speaker in knowing their ancestral identifiers.
There is also another App that I have shared with my students on Google Playstore which is called "1miriona" and that too allows the user to add their information to a template and then produces a more detailed pepeha that one can take around with them and recite if needed.
Definitely a beautiful way of sharing important parts of your genealogy and links to the natural world and sharing with the next generations...
No comments:
Post a Comment