A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Waitangi & The Bay of Islands - Treaty Grounds
The communal meeting house at the Treaty Grounds is a bit grander than would be found in most Maori communities, but it is similar in form and style. It is located in immediate proximity to the sacred open meeting area (marae) which is the center of all community life and is regarded to be the most spiritual space in the community. Celebrations, weddings, christenings, tribal reunions and funerals all take place on the marae. Interpersonal disputes are resolved there, visiting delegations are greeted there, important community decisions are made there, and in days long past decisions about war and peace were made there.
The Maori people believe that their ancestral homeland was in a place called Hawaiki. Their oral tradition goes on to say that the original people who came to present day New Zealand did so more than a thousand years ago. They traveled in large ocean going canoes similar to ones in use today during various festivals and ceremonies. Interestingly, the preponderance of archeological and cultural evidence unearthed to date would seem to substantiate the approximate timing of the migration, and the use of large canoes as the means of transport. Most of these same scholars are comfortable in calling the place or places of origin Hawaiki and place them somewhere in greater Polynesia although a few academics believe that the Maori may have arrived in New Zealand from China via Southeast Asia.
The Maori Creation Story revolves around the activity of the Sky Father (Ranginui), the Earth Mother (Papatuanuku), and an important deity named Maui who literally fished the islands of New Zealand up out of the sea long long ago. European history celebrates the likes of Abel Tasman and James Cook as great explorers who discovered New Zealand in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively, but the Maori know that the first human being to come to New Zealand was a Maori and his name was Kupe and he arrived more than a thousand years ago. Kupe had killed his cousin and stolen his cousin's wife and had to flee Hawaiki. After several desperate trials Kupe discovered the Land of the Long White Cloud - New Zealand.
