The Stardome is our local Planetarium Observatory, and it was neat to watch the show for a second time to better understand the position of the stars.
What's been really interesting learning about indigenous Māori knowledge, in which their pūrākau or ancient stories have ancestral knowledge embedded within about the stars.
One of the stories was about Maui fishing the North Island of New Zealand from the ocean. The knowledge we now possess is of the star cluster called Scorpius, which resembles the tail of a scorpion in one culture, but for Māori, it resembles a fish hook.
Being navigational masters, they were able to follow that star cluster to discover NZ much earlier than Captain Cook. The story of Maui now makes a lot of sense and it's been so interesting to now gain a new understanding and appreciation of that story.
The star cluster of Matariki also has it's (back)story of which I would encourage all NZer's to learn about. I've been teaching it to my students from varied cultural backgrounds to give a better understanding of why it is known as the Māori new year which coincidentally falls in with the financial year.
The other neat thing is that it has become a new holiday since 2022 with Friday the 20th of June being a public holiday for NZ, although it does change every year depending. This is exciting too because my place of work has given us an extra day off including Thursday the 19th of June so that families can spend time together.
With an emphasis on whānau or family moreso than another sales marketed holiday eg. Christmas with gifts and Santa Claus paraphernalia as well as Easter with easter eggs and bunnies, hot cross buns and Springtime...
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