A Maori Welcome

This morning, I literally hit the ground running in Auckland, New Zealand. My flight from Honolulu arrived at 6:30 am and I immediately headed to the harbor to run among the Kiwis (people from New Zealand are known as Kiwis). Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and it was wonderful to take in the beautiful waterfront area first thing. Because we crossed the international date line, we lost a day in the process of flying from Hawaii; it was July 15 when we left and we arrived on July 17. Our first tourist stop in New Zealand was the Auckland War Memorial Museum where we learned about the traditions surrounding the Marae of the Maori. The Maori are the people who first settled New Zealand nearly 1000 years ago. The Maori people and their culture are an integral part of life in modern day New Zealand. While the Maori are very much a contemporary people, their daily life is steeped in rich traditions. We learned a tremendous amount about Maori traditions today; hopefully what I am going to describe is accurate. At the center of Maori communities are the Marae , or meeting spaces. These structures are where Maori tribes welcome guests into their community. They may be very simple structures. or, as in the case of the Marae at the museum, be filled with elaborate carvings that both tell stories and represent the genealogy of the tribe. When we arrived at the Auckland Museum, we were lucky enough to be welcomed into a Marae through the powhiri (ceremonial welcome). This welcome is a process that moves a visitor from the status of outsider to the status of insider so that they can be, for the duration of their stay, part of that tribe and thus carry the tribe’s protections. The powhiri is an opportunity for people to discover their connections and acknowledge their ancestors and home. Singing is one way that information is exchanged in the powhiri. As part of our welcome, we sang a waiata song we had practiced the day before for just such an occasion. The formal greetings are part of what is know as protocol and it is very important that you follow protocol. Our bus driver, George, is a Maori from north of Auckland and he helped walk us through this process. I feel very lucky to have been able to participate in such a fundemental aspect of Maori life on my very first day in New Zealand. I was able to purchase a book for the library all about the marae so you can learn much more come Septemeber. Oh, and one more thing, New Zealand is known as Aotearoa in the Maori language which means land of the long white cloud.