New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern fulfilled her electoral promise to make the New Year celebration in Māori, Matariki, a holiday – the first official day to celebrate Māori in the world.
Ardern confirmed next year’s holiday during his speech at the upper marae in Waitangi on Thursday. “Matariki is an exclusively Maori celebration and is therefore based in New Zealand … and, in our opinion, it’s been a long time.”
Matariki is the Māori name given to the Pleiades star cluster, which appears in the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere – marking the beginning of the new Māori year. The reappearance of the constellation in the night sky has been celebrated at events across New Zealand since the beginning of 2000, although MP Rahui Katene of the Māori party failed to recognize it as a holiday in 2009.
This call was renewed last year with campaigns from the news site Stuff, which advocates ActionStation and the New Zealand Republic. A survey of 1,128 people conducted by UMR found that 63% supported Matariki by making it a holiday, with those under 45 likely to approve.
Labor has promised to make Matariki a holiday in the 2020 election. The first celebration of the holiday will be June 24 next year, although the dates change according to Maramataka, the Maori lunar calendar.
“We wanted to bring in those who had the experience to set those early dates,” said Ardern.
The holidays for the next 30 years will soon be decided with the newly established Matariki advisory group – although it is expected to always fall on a Monday or Friday, between the Queen’s birthday in June and Labor Day in late October. .
President Rangiānehu Matamua – a professor at the University of Waikato who specializes in Maori astronomy – said it is important to recognize regional differences in how the iwi (tribes) mark the beginning of Matariki each year.
The group would also advise on how the event should be celebrated and develop resources to educate the public about its meaning and other indigenous wisdom. Ardern said he saw the new public holiday as “an opportunity to learn more about Matariki” and to support other initiatives, such as learning Maori history in schools.
The government also hopes that a new holiday will help boost the tourism industry, encouraging domestic travel during the winter and – once borders are reopened for international visitors – as a “unique New Zealand vacation experience to market to the world. ”.
The new public holiday will be legislated in the Holiday Law later this year. It is New Zealand’s twelfth public holiday since Waitangi Day was introduced almost 50 years ago.
Speaking to the media after his speech, Ardern said his government was committed to making progress for Māori and navigating the relationship under the Waitangi Treaty.
“There will never be a moment – I think, if we are honest with ourselves – when we will be here in Waitangi and say that we have reached a point of perfection, because there will always be challenges.
“Some will be the ones we have worked with as a nation for decades, and others will be new to us. But what is important is that we fundamentally change the way we solve them – this is the change that we are looking for as a government ”.
She refuted a reporter’s suggestion that transformational change was “very difficult”.
“Things that will help us change the way our next generation thinks about New Zealand, who we are – things like learning history in schools – these are the things that lay the foundation for us to do things differently.”
Ardern and his ministers will attend the National Iwi Chairs Forum on Friday, held virtually due to Covid’s concerns, before the Waitangi Day dawn ceremony on Saturday.