Celebrate Matariki 2022 with stories
Māori have their own New Year, which is marked by the rise of Matariki,
a cluster of stars, and the sighting of the next new moon.
From 2022 onwards, our nation acknowledges and joins in the celebration of Matariki. This annual holiday marks a coming together of people, an opportunity to learn from each other, and to deepen our human connections and guardianship of this land.
The story we share with you for these 2022 Maratiki celebrations is called Life Lessons.
This story offers a starting place to launch your celebrations. Storytelling teachers will know how to teach this story to their students, how to support their learners to become the storyteller, and how to loiter with and explore the story for deeper learning. It can be told with or without the maori names, with more te roe words and phrases, or translated to tell in te reo by those in bilingual and immersion settings.
Follow the star path to linked activities
Depending on your religion, ethnicity, and country where you live, 'a new year' can come at different times in a year and be celebrated in different ways. Cultures and communities worldwide have their own stories, traditions, and customs that become part of their seasonal celebrations for the end of a beginning of a new year. Measuring time was important to most early people and communities. A complete cycle of seasons became their measure of time, of a full year passing. Before calendars and clocks, the disappearance and re-appearance of the stars and nature's own timepieces were used to mark the passing of the seasons.
As tangata whenua of Aotearoa, maori used a combination of the stars and the natural signs such as the blossoming or fruiting of plants, the migration of birds, changing temperatures to determine their new year.
For all early people, here and elsewhere, to survive and thrive knowledge and skills had to be passed from generation to generation. Storytelling throughout time and today was and is, the carrier pigeon gifting forward essential knowledge, cultural, spiritual, and religious beliefs.
Matariki Wonder & Wisdom Jars