A REVIEW OF MĀORI ASTRONOMY IN AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND Māori understanding of the cosmos permeated their pre-colonial life, influencing practices in agriculture, architecture, and navigation. This paper sheds light on ongoing research aiming to comprehend ancestral Māori perspectives on the heavens.
Māori ancestors possessed a wealth of astronomical knowledge that they referred to as tātai arorangi. The knowledge was important for many aspects of daily life, from growing crops, fishing and navigation to telling time and the change of seasons.
One of the most popular is that the star Matariki is the whaea (mother), surrounded by her six daughters, Tupu-ā-nuku, Tupu-ā-rangi, Waipunarangi, Waitī and Waitā, and Ururangi. Matariki and her daughters journey across the sky each year to visit their tupuna wāhine, Papatūānuku.
whare kōkōrangi It was an astronomical record containing the names of 1000 stars and 103 constellations, as well as instructions for setting up a traditional house of astronomical learning or whare kōkōrangi.
Dark, clear skies, unique celestial features and otherworldly landscapes make stargazing in New Zealand a breathtakingly magical experience.
The Maori space-time construct can be thought of more like a constellation with the past and the people of the past always felt in the present, like the constellations of the sky to the voyager – enmeshing, surrounding, always before you, always behind, forming patterns that can be interpreted in various ways.