Matāriki Celebrations

As you may well be aware Matāriki star cluster returned to the skies this morning signalling the start of a new year. Matāriki, like the more well known New Year at the end of December, is a time for communities to come together and celebrate. Coming together to share kai, learn about our ancestors (whakapapa) and reflect on the year are some of the ways we have decided to celebrate Matāriki this year.

We have spent some time learning about what the word whakapapa means. One student’s interpretation was that “Whakapapa is your family tree its all most like your pepeha. You can see how you relate to other families. You can figure out your history.”

This understanding helped leverage us towards asking questions about our own whakapapa. We had some basic questions we needed to answer about ourselves then create further questions that we wanted to ask of our whānau. We then spent time learning how to interview before spending time with our family getting the information we needed.

Once our interviews were completed it was time to make sense of what we’d heard and found out. We recorded the answers then worked together to create a shared classroom display of what we’ve learnt about our families.

To continue our Matāriki celebrations, next week we are holding a planting day in our Wilderness Area starting at 10:30am with the planting of our natives bought with a grant from Horizons then we will have an official opening ceremony and sign unveiling. Our get together concludes with a celebratory lunch of soup and bread.

We’d love you to join us so please let Stacey know if you haven’t already so we can make sure we have enough soup.