Hokianga, Waikato; Matariki, Mataali’i

FEATURE / TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI

Written by Ivy Lyden-Hancy (she/her/ia | Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Wairere, Tūkorehe, Samoa (Falefā), Tonga (Vava’u) | @tekaraipiture | Contributing Writer

Illustration by Maia Staples-Fletcher (she/her) | @maia_sfletch | Contributing Artist

I see my family in the stars, from Hokianga to Waikato, we are the stars of Matariki. Our waka wairua as we travel through time. Stuck in it, in the nostalgia, my tupuna, my nanas, my papas, the stars in my hands are all interconnected.

I think of my childhood, floating between marae. I remember jumping off the wharf, making crabs fights, climbing in the mattress room, electric fences, the sheep that was gutted in Waikato, the kauri tree where my papa lay. I think the last time my family were all together was at nan’s tangi. I haven’t been back since then. I see Matariki through Hine-nui-te-pō; the waka from the physical world to the next. Always there, watching, always with us. Are the stars everyone we’ve lost?

There is a belief about migration, only being between the land and the sea. We followed the stars, followed the currents, felt the wind in our hair. What about the whenua and our tinana? Clay and earth, bone and breath; I think of the migration of my whānau, from Waikato to Hokianga to Manurewa and then Papakura. I think of the silence in the car, what broke it? What questions filled it? What stars were out at the time, did they look for Matariki.

Matariki reminds me that I’m a Tāmaki Māori. Tāmaki Māori are Māori who came in the great fleet to Tāmaki Makaurau. One of the biggest migrations of Aotearoa history. It is the catalyst of displacement and was the big shift of many becoming an urban Māori. Last year I went to my mate’s, she lives in the middle of nowhere; you could see the stars, the galactic mist, I saw my whānau. Came back home but how can I look to the stars when the street lights are in the way.

Matariki, in a sense, is my tohunga. The moon is my sun. I love talking in metaphor, for the mainstream has reached conformity in their writing. In short, my family are from Hokianga and Waikato. Not just my direct family but every link of the whakapapa tree. I can trace back to my tupuna, the colonisers, and those who came before them. Matariki is like a family tree in the sense of all Māori being connected; when we go off Te Rerenga Wairua we will all become the stars, like mataali’i. The stars in my hand, in your eyes and mine.