New Zealand Aotearoa Rituals and Powhiri

Tino Rangatiratanga Flag

Courtesy of: FOTW-"Flags of the World"

Class Summary:

In class on Thursday, we continued to discuss the Maori revitalization.

Here is a brief summary:

New Zealand or Aotearoa is the last place to be inhabited by the Austronesian people who have been said to migrated from the Society Islands and the Cook Islands. New Zealand is made up of two separate islands; North and South. In the 19th century, the British settled in Aotearoa which caused the decline in Maori language and culture. Therefore the Treaty of Waitangi was created to keep the land in the hands of the Maori people. However, the British thought the treaty was made to surrender Maori lands over to the British. Due to this confusion the Maori people lost use of their language and their culture.

In the 1970's, the Maori people began to fight back and revitalize their language and their culture by the development of Ngo Kohanaga Reo. Ngo Kohanaga Reo is a school that was developed to teach children in their native tongue. Also due to the Maori people's efforts they were able to make Maori one of the official languages of Aotearoa.

Comments:

I first found it interesting that Aotearoa is the last place on Earth to be inhabited by humans. It makes much more sense now that this is why the people are able to remember their ancestors so well. I also learned that the Hawaiian Punana Leo is based on the Maori's Ngo Kohanaga Reo. I think that this very important because if it were not for the Maori, Hawaiians may not have been able to start Punana Leo for quite some years later. I believe that the Maori are definitely an example of how a native people are able to fight back and regain culture.

I also thought the clip on Two Cars, One Night was also interesting. I didn't realize until after watching the clip how the two children's interaction with each other mirrored the protocol to visit a place. I think that having it being children helped the clip to be a little more easy to relate to how we interact with people in day to day life. It also made the clip more entertaining to watch versus the other clip we watched on protocol which was very formal and on a step by step basis. While it was still interesting to see the steps done one by one I think that the children helped to demonstrate the steps without making it so formal.