New head of steam keeps rising for Matariki's hautapu ceremony

Sunday, 19 June 2022

Ngāti Raukawa te reo and tikanga expert Paraone Gloyne at Rawhitiroa Marae in the Owairaka Valley outside Kihikihi (file).

Hautapu is a name recently rediscovered in Waikato for an old Matariki ceremony involving feeding the constellation’s whetū (stars) with steam (hautapu) from an oven.

It’s a term Matariki expert and astronomer Dr Rangi Mātāmua has acknowledged was revived at Rāwhitiroa Marae in the Wharepuhunga rohe, south of Te Awamutu, by the Ngāti Takihiku hapū.

The hapū’s Paraone Gloyne – a Ngāti Raukawa te reo and tikanga expert also recognised nationally as a rangatira in kapa haka – said it was a term rediscovered about six years ago.

An old kauta (cookhouse) built in the 1800s, which had belonged to a tupuna (ancestor) Marerahi, is based at Rāwhiritoa. Marerahi had bought up a first cousin to Gloyne’s grandfather.

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Matariki expert Dr Rangi Matamua has acknowledged the role of Rāwhitiroa marae in revitalising use of the hautapu ceremony.

In a conversation about Matariki with that first cousin some years ago, he had revealed how Marerahi had carried out a ceremony around the 1940s involving an umu. The word “hautapu” was part of a haka relating to this, said Gloyne.

A Te Wānanga o Aotearoa booklet quotes the haka as saying: “Ko te hautapu e rite ki te kai nā Matariki pakia.”

“The hautapu is the steam from the umu that rises to feed the stars,” Gloyne explained.

Ngāti Takihiku was clocking up its sixth hautapu ceremony this year since reviving the term.

As the hapū revived that ritual it had also become a more widespread term. “Rangi took that word hautapu and it’s become now the name, the word for that ritual,” said Gloyne.

He said Mātāmua had acknowledged several years ago that Rāwhitiroa was the place where the ritual was revived “and he referred to ours’ as the hautapu kaumātua”.

And the point of hautapu?

“It’s to sustain the whetū for the next year that’s coming.”

But the ceremony also helped focus people’s minds on all the mahi (work) that goes into producing food generally.

“It’s another way to bring you close to the taiao, the environment.”

For Ngāti Takihiku, preparation for the ceremony had also evolved with, for example, one person in charge of growing kumara for each year’s oven.

“We’ve gone past buying the kumara from Pak’nSave. Somebody actually grows it.”

An uncle collects tuna (eels) and somebody else is in charge of going fishing. His partner’s mother makes the kono (food baskets) that go into the umu, a nephew gets the umu ready.

“So everybody has a job.”

While the ceremony was still tapu, because everybody had been doing it for a while “it feels like it’s something that brings us together at one time”.

The name Te Umu Kohukohu Whetū had also been used in association with the ceremony but hautapu had particularly caught on in the last few years. Said Gloyne: “Everybody’s saying we’re going to have a hautapu, which is cool.”

Mātāmua said the hautapu ceremony is usually done in the mornings during a 7-8 day window coinciding with Matariki’s Tangaroa period. This year that window runs from June 21-28.