This first indigenous Māori holiday is now in its third year of celebration but there are still many people in New Zealand who are not aware of its origins.
It was interesting to watch the information regarding the Māori creation story regarding Papatuānuku (as Earth mother) and Ranginui (as Sky Father).
It was good to see it being shared with a greater New Zealand audience i.e. the new generations and those from overseas. The other neat thing was to also read the names of the planets in te reo (language) Māori as some of these celestial bodies that could be seen by the naked eye also had Māori names.
Over the last few years, I have been following Professor Rangi Matamua whose amazing vision has brought about this marvellous feat in being able to validate the important bodies of knowledge of Māori that had been suppressed through racist colonial laws and also a superior (inferior) complex of those early days.
This is particularly important as the dawn of a new era with many Māori scholars and Māori students learning ways of their ancestors to bring about (k)new knowledge (there's a whole scholarship of writing on reclaiming those concepts as well).
I feel humbled and privileged (in a good way) to be able to share these learnings with my students and appreciate the centuries of accumulated knowledge that helped my wayfinding ancestors to navigate to Samoa and then settle and create measina a Samoa that my thesis is based around.
This knowledge is only the tip of the iceberg of the many bodies of knowledge that are being reclaimed and support new generations of Indigenous peoples in their identities, informing songs, dances, speeches, protocols, and ways of being. A dawn of a new age of acceptance and learning...
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