Rangiānehu Mātāmua, the man behind the stars

Thursday, 8 December 2022

Rangiānehu ‘Rangi’ Mātāmua reckons no-one fully comprehended how widely Aotearoa would have embraced the first national official Matariki observance day.

This year, for the first time, Matariki was celebrated as a national public holiday – and it will be held each year on a Friday, with dates already set for the next 30 years.

In October, Mātāmua (Ngāi Tūhoe) was appointed as chief adviser for mātauranga Matariki by Kiri Allan, the associate arts and culture minister.

In his new role, Mātāmua will be the country’s national advocate and spokesperson for Matariki, and help to strengthen the understanding of the knowledge from which Matariki is derived among New Zealand’s people.

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He will also advise the government on Matariki knowledge and provide direction on how best to help iwi and communities celebrate their own Matariki knowledge.

The appointment was a natural fit given that Mātāmua, who is 49, chaired the Matariki advisory group that decided when, why and how Matariki should be celebrated nationally. In that position he ensured the observance of Matariki was underpinned by traditional Māori principles and values.

But Mātāmua’s journey with the stars started many moons ago.

Mātāmua removes kai at this year’s nationally observed Matariki public holiday on June 24. The steam from kai (food) is offered to the stars to give thanks to Matariki for the harvests of the past year that have kept people nourished.

The second of four children, Mātāmua was born in Palmerston North in 1973 and went to the predominantly-Māori Taitoko School in Levin. With his sister, he was one of only two children to go there with a Māori given name and surname.

He later spent five years at Hato Pāora College, a boarding school for Māori boys outside Feilding – years he says were the best of his life, and that helped shape him. He went on to complete a master’s thesis on traditional Māori weaponry at Victoria University, and then a PhD in Māori radio and language revitalisation at Massey.

Now, Mātāmua is based in Hamilton. He remains a professor at Massey’s School of Māori Knowledge, but splits his free time between Levin, where some of his family are based, Wellington, the home of his new Matariki role that’s overseen by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and Ruatāhuna in Te Urewera, where he has a house next to Mātaatua Marae.

“My job is mowing the lawn,” he says.

Mātāmua credits his tīpuna as inspiring his current pursuits – particularly his great, great-grandfather, who in the 1800s wrote a manuscript about Māori star lore complete with star names, information about constellations and tribal knowledge.

Growing up, Mātāmua didn’t think much of astronomy outside his wonder and fascination with science and sci-fi, including a love of programmes and films like Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who and Blake’s 7.

But in the mid-1990s, when studying at undergraduate level, Mātāmua’s humble, gentlemanly grandfather Jim Moses (Timi Rāwiri Mātāmua), who was raised in the middle of the Te Urewera forest, gifted him the historic manuscript.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s when Moses was on his deathbed, that he told Mātāmua that knowledge that wasn’t shared wasn’t knowledge.

Using his grandfather’s advice, Mātāmua wrote a book that was published in 2017, Matariki – The Star of the Year. He's since written one more with broadcaster Miriama Kamo, Matariki Around the World: a Cluster of Stars, a Cluster of Stories. The books have illuminated thousands of Kiwis about Matariki, and in 2019 Mātāmua was awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize.

This was followed up the next year by his receiving the Callaghan Medal, and his saying he wanted to eventually establish an institute of Māori astronomy.

Mātāmua is currently working on an even bigger, third book on Māori astronomy with detailed information about the hundreds of Māori stars and constellations, all based on his ancestor’s te reo writings.

The sunrise over Wellington on the first nationally observed Matariki public holiday at Te Papa this year.

He’s felt the weight of an intergenerational legacy through the whole process of Matariki becoming a nationally observed holiday. “Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would get a holiday for Matariki … I’m hoping it becomes a marker, a pillar for our national identity. Something unique to who we are.”

Matariki is the name of a cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus, commonly known as Pleiades, which rises on the horizon towards the end of May at dawn and heralds the Māori New Year.

As well as being significant to Māori, the Matariki constellation is mentioned in the Bible, Talmud and Koran, and is featured in cave paintings in France and in Chinese histories.

Matariki is a time to remember lost loved ones, as it’s part of the constellation Te Waka O Rangi, which Māori legend describes as a canoe with Matariki at the front, captained by a star called Taramainuku.

Each night Taramainuku’s net was said to have been cast down to Earth to gather the souls of those who died that day. He carries them behind his waka for 11 months before taking them to the underworld when the constellation sets in May. When it rises again a month later, Taramainuku releases the souls into the sky to become stars.

Mātāmua says New Zealand is starting to come of age as a nation.

Mātāmua says there’s meaning in giving a final farewell to ancestors as they became stars. “One day, we’ll join them in the procession that happens above our heads every night.”

Western society had emphasised showing little emotion in dealing with grief, carrying on with work as normal and being stoic and strong, Mātāmua says.

“For Māori, we carry our dead with us. We carry the memory. You don’t want to cut them – you carry them, remember them. In Matariki, you send them on their final … interstellar journey into the cosmos.”

There was healing calling out those people’s names as they joined their place among ancestors of times past.

But Matariki is not just about acknowledging those who have passed. While there is variation within te ao Māori on when and how Matariki is acknowledged, the Matariki advisory group agreed that at its core, Matariki was also about planning for the future and celebrating who we are today as people, particularly through food and the sharing of company.

It’s not a period of restriction, and is underpinned by values of environmental awareness and wellbeing. In short, it's a time to sit down, “eat and get fat”, be merry, and ask people how they’re doing, Mātāmua says.

It is interesting to think about what New Zealanders celebrate, he says, as celebrations are significant markers of how people view themselves – the United States, for example, celebrates Independence Day. And some holidays here like Guy Fawkes and Queen's Birthday were imports from the United Kingdom.

“As a nation we’re starting to come of age. We’re starting to realise we have an identity with who we are here. We don’t have to look overseas and be the mirror image of Britain,” Mātāmua says.

There was an undeniable connection between humanity and the cosmos, not only with people’s desire to explore the universe in spacecraft and with telescopes, but with how people have always looked to the skies for navigation, planting, timekeeping and to understand who they were, what came before them, and what lay ahead.

“Every culture looked to the sky,” Mātāmua says.

Stars in the sky were all different colours, shapes and sizes, with some clustered and some isolated. Despite this, they moved in unison, not clashing or conflicting. He reckons there are lessons there in how different people should behave together.

“Matariki allows us to be unique individuals and celebrate one another in unity.”