We're a multicultural nation

At present, 28 percent of us identify as coming from a non-European migrant background Narayanan says.

A 2021 MNZ initiative has already seen Multicultural Councils across the country celebrating a Te Tiriti-based National Multicultural Day on the last Friday of August, he says.

On that day MNZ encourages migrants to make their heritage visible by wearing cultural clothing, sharing traditional food with friends and colleagues, and speaking their native language.

A specific day off to visibly celebrate our different cultures would allow us to "thank our ancestors" Narayanan says.

He also suggests a second paid day off could be considered so New Zealanders could celebrate an event that is culturally significant to them.

This could - for example - be taken on a religious holiday that is not otherwise celebrated as a public holiday in New Zealand.

Rather than a set day, people would be able to choose when to take this day off and have it written into their contracts for work.

"New Zealand would be the richer for it" and "ethnic communities will flourish" he says.

Taking the suggestion to Parliament

Rather than celebrate this year's Te Tiriti-based National Multicultural Day last Friday, MNZ decided to celebrate it at Parliament last Monday so he could introduce his proposal to our politicians.

Minister for Ethnic Communities Melissa Lee joined the celebrations saying she is proud of New Zealand's diversity which continues to develop and expand.

"There is immense value in the many cultural celebrations that are already being held around New Zealand throughout the year" she says.

Cultural celebrations "help to grow social cohesion in New Zealand" which is "already very multicultural, with more than 160 ethnicities represented".

Lee is encouraging MNZ to make a petition to Parliament about its proposal, where democratic processes would debate and decide the outcome.

Just what that outcome will be is open to speculation.

It's likely though that the ACT Party will hesitate because of the cost to business.

It could involve sacrificing a current paid public holiday.

As it is, ACT wants to get rid of the 2 January holiday to allow for Matariki, which was introduced as a new holiday in 2022.

Source

• 1News

Regional anniversary days or King's birthdays are easy. Many have their own rituals and routines: beach, boat or bach for the weekend is the aspiration for most of us.

In one sense, Matariki is a long-overdue move towards a confident national identity.

Most of our holidays are imports, and many are seasonally out of place or a touch too colonial for the present day.

At the same time, the public ritual of hautapu at Matariki confronts us with another world - the Maori world, which is often invisible to Pakeha consciousness.

It invites us to consider a spiritual side to a holiday that does not fit easily into our dominant national narrative.

Secular culture and karakia

Pakeha New Zealand is one of the most aggressively secular cultures in the world.

And yet, we will soon see the Wellington elite participating in a karakia to atua (divine beings) that many of the attendees do not believe exist — although it would be a naïve or reckless politician who would admit to that view!

I applaud this inclusion of spirituality in the bland intellectual desert of Pakeha secularism.

I also believe there is a reality which the invocations of the whetu (stars) of Matariki engage with.

I am not a sceptical Pakeha politician, virtue-signalling my allegiance to the cultural tide of resurgent Maori identity.

In fact, my view is that the atua being invoked may well decide to engage in human affairs, but I would much rather that they didn't - I doubt their benevolence, not their being.

Despite my qualms, I much prefer a nation where our debate is about the best way to engage with spirituality, rather than whether it has a place at all.

Engaging with the reality of the unseen world allows us to engage in the kind of moral reasoning that can build a flourishing society - one that enables productive political competition instead of a divisive reductionism.

Including Maori rituals and spirituality

The inclusion of Maori rituals and spirituality in public life is in one sense the development of a new civic religion.

Christianity once notionally held that place, but the hypocrisy of the settlers, and their settler churches, led to Christian allegiance being more a matter of public identity signalling than a devout force uniting communal life.

What we are now seeing, in response to the human longing for transcendence, is a re-emergence of one Maori way of being into our public culture.

I welcome that cultural shift.

Rituals, as the English theologian Elizabeth Oldfield recently observed, help us to attend to aspects of reality that we might otherwise not notice.

In a world defined by algorithmic bids for our attention, it is all too easy for us to ignore what ought to be obvious to us.

Maori have never lost attentiveness to those aspects of reality that we call spirituality.

Among Maori, the debate is not whether there is a spiritual dimension to life - that is a given - but about which way of engaging spiritually is good, and has the power to ensure our collective flourishing. Read more

• The Ven Dr Lyndon Drake (Ngati Kuri, Ngai Tuahuriri, Ngai Tahu) is the Archdeacon of Tamaki Makaurau in the Maori Bishopric of Te Tai Tokerau. He holds a DPhil in theology from the University of Oxford.

Professor Matamua has dedicated much of his life to the revitalisation and resurgence of Matariki and has written widely about Matariki.

He is regarded as one of the country's foremost Maori scholars for his contribution to Maori astronomy, star lore and Maori culture was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2022. Read more

Justin Lester is suggesting the Maori New Year could replace the Queen's Birthday holiday, which was not meaningful for many who saw it as just a day off.

Last year Wellington City Council cancelled its 2018 Guy Fawkes Sky Show, moving the fireworks display to Matariki on July 7.

This year Wellington is putting Matariki at the heart of a new month-long winter festival, with $250,000 allocated for the celebrations, which started on June 15.

Lester is being supported by Rongotai MP Paul Eagle who wants to "reignite the debate"' and is seeking advice on putting up a Member's Bill.

A Member's Bill was put up by the Maori Party in 2009 and was supported by Labour but didn't get past the first reading, losing 63 to 59, Eagle said.

"It's a very different time now. Back then people were only getting used to the concept of a Maori New Year but now it's part of the fabric of New Zealand.

I think people are more ready for it now," he says.

He said the debate would not have to be about replacing Queen's Birthday, it could even be an additional holiday.

Forget the propagated myths about "multiculturalism", because New Zealand is monocultural says Stuff columnist Glen McConnell.

"We celebrate Christian holidays and we get days off when we pay respects to the Queen."

McConnell says New Zealanders have failed to properly recognise Maori holidays or moments of significance.

Waitangi Day is the only holiday which realises people who aren't Pakeha also live in New Zealand he says.

The celebration of Matariki is marked each year by the appearance of the Matariki (or Pleiades) cluster of stars around late May to early June.

Once the new moon arrives after the appearance of the star cluster, celebrations begin, lasting for up to three days.

Source

• thewanakasun.co.nz
• www.stuff.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: wellington.govt.nz

Mayor Justin Lester suggests the Maori New Year could replace the Queen's Birthday holiday, which was not meaningful for many who saw it as just a day off. Continue reading

Victoria University historian Grant Morris says that, although the Guy Fawkes celebration is now stripped of its original meaning, "it retains that anti-Catholic title."

He says it is a "bit odd" the celebration of Guy Fawkes continues because "Catholicism is now the largest Christian denomination in New Zealand."

Wellington's mayor is pulling the plug on the city's 22-year-old Guy Fawkes festival in favour of the Maori New Year festival, Matariki.

Justin Lester said Matariki ought to be a cornerstone celebration, rather than Guy Fawkes which marks "the anniversary of an attempt to blow up British parliament more than 400 years ago."

Morris says Guy Fawkes was once a significant sectarian celebration.

"In New Zealand early on there was that sectarian tension, so it would have meant more to those settlers, would have meant more to a Protestant settler what they were celebrating in relation to Guy Fawkes, but also to a Catholic settler what they weren't celebrating."

In the mid-to-late 19^th Century, the Freemasons and the Orange Order would have marched in recognition of the day.

And Catholics in New Zealand at the time would have been uncomfortable and wary, Morris says.

Writing in the Guardian about the residual prejudice against Catholics in the UK, Catherine Pepinster says it comes from those who are avowedly secular.

"It was apparent in protests during Pope Benedict XVI's state visit in 2010.

"Hideous caricatures of the pope appeared on the streets - of the German pope carrying a swastika rather than a crucifix. Catholicism seems fair game."

Source

• RNZ
• Wellington City Council
• Stuff
• The Guardian
• Image: HistoryGeek

The theme will be the stars of midwinter: Ave Maris Stella - Matariki.

Matariki is the Maori name for the seven-star constellation that rises in the north-east before dawn in late May / early June.

In Western astronomy it is known the Pleiades, and it forms the shoulder of Taurus the Bull.

The festival will take place in St Patrick's College hall in Kilbirnie.

It will begin at 10:00am with a formal ceremony, and conclude at 6:00pm.

The Catholic Community of Wellington is a microcosm of New Zealand Society.

Along with the Tangata Whenua it includes people who have come to New Zealand from many different parts of the world, Dutch, Samoan, British, Tongan, Chinese, Polish, Tokelau, French, Indonesian, Kiwi, Indian, Italian, Korean, German, Filipino and many other places.

All of the these ethnic communities have been invited to showcase their cultures.

During the day there will be a programmed series of events that will give an opportunity for each of the ethnic groups to demonstrate or perform some aspect of its culture.

The St Mary of the Angels choirs will also be involved.

The organisers are asking for a response from all of Wellington's parishes and communities.

Anyone one who is interested in taking part can contact Robert Oliver:
robert.oliver@paradise.net.nz
04 934 2296;
021 0257 4375

Source

• Supplied
• Image: Farm4.static.flickr.com matervictoriae.altervista.org

Dr Pita Sharples, Maori Party Co-Leader, supported Kelston's initiative saying that 'schools have to reflect and respect the culture of our kids to make them feel welcome and connected' and noting that karakia, 'is a vital part of our lifestyle.'

Pita was probably talking about Maori lifestyle but even so, our collective, multi-cultural Kiwi world is well on the way to being an eclectic blend of cultural and religious rituals.

I was thinking about all this during a Matariki service last week at the hospital where I work as a chaplain. My colleague, another Anglican priest who happens to be Maori, led the service.

God, the Christian version and a combination of older models, was addressed in the karakia nestled amidst chanting, singing, good humour, tree planting and a cuppa afterwards. It was heart warming.

However, if we'd tried to celebrate a Christian festival honouring the changing of the seasons and the sacredness of the Earth, few, if any would have felt obligated to turn up. Instead it would have been seen as religious, an attempt to force an unwanted and irrelevant belief system on others.

In one sense what Dr Sharples says is true. However, it's also true that communities focused on Christianity, Judaism or Islam would not be able to introduce their prayers into a state school as Kelston has done because we have enshrined religious prejudice in law.

This is why church schools in New Zealand are now the only places teaching an intellectually rigorous curriculum of religious studies, values, ethics and philosophy; remarkably useful subjects for growing citizens of a diverse world.

Religions grew out of human struggles with life, the quest for an understanding of the 'more than' of our existence. Continue reading

Sources

• Sande Ramage in Spirited Crone
• Image: Marist Messenger

Sande Ramage is an Anglican priest and blogger.