So today is the offi­cial start of Matariki, for some time now there has been a push for Matariki to become a pub­lic hol­i­day, Min­is­ter of Maori Affairs Dr Pita Sharples last week announced the Maori Party had draf­ted a bill to make Matariki a pub­lic hol­i­day.  See what the Prime Min­is­ter thinks of the idea here.

Some accounts have Matariki as a moth­er and her 6 daugh­ters assist­ing Te R? as he turns around and heads south.  I like this story bet­ter than the Greek ver­sion of Plei­ades which has the sev­en daugh­ters of Pleione and Atlas turned into stars to ‘save them from Ori­on’s dis­hon­our­able inten­tions’.  Where are the kick-arse god­desses of legend when you need them?  In Japan­ese legend the sun god­dess Ama­t­er­asu was lured out of her cave by a good old bit of bur­lesque dan­cing and sil­li­ness per­formed by the volup­tu­ous god­dess of mer­ri­ment Ama-no-Uzume.  That is cer­tainly one way of coax­ing the sun out of a funk.

There are a range of things around Wel­ling­ton planned help get the Matariki cel­eb­ra­tions rolling:

  • Te Papa is plan­ning a whole range of events kick­ing off on the 25th of June until the 12th of July, com­ing cor­rect with the free Sev­en Sis­ters con­cert from 6.00pm on Thursday 25th.  The Star Lab ses­sions start from 6.30pm on Thursday too and are bound to be pop­u­lar so book to avoid dis­ap­point­ment. 
  • Sub­mit pho­tos for Te Papa’s inter­act­ive dis­play of Matariki images before the 28th June and you may see your image go large on the big screens out­side Te Papa.
  • NZ on Screen have a fant­ast­ic Matariki col­lec­tion cur­ated by Whai Ngata which is def­in­itely worth a look.
  • NZ Post has put out a set of hei tiki stamps to com­mem­or­ate Matariki (I love how the tiki look like they are dan­cing on slideshow).

People are cel­eb­rat­ing with friends and wh?nau by mak­ing kites, head­ing to the beach to look at the night sky, mak­ing mulled wine with friends and gen­er­ally just reflect­ing on the fact that we have an indi­gen­ous mid-winter cel­eb­ra­tion to rival Christ­mas.

Let us know what you do this month, we would love to hear about it and if you would like to see more/buy some of Taryn Ber­i’s work (image above entitled MAREIKURA TAHI – 09) let us know and we will put you in touch (she also does T? Moko designs).