Journal day 45 - The Maori.

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Auckland.

Have been hit with a bit of a cold since Sydney so decided to just do a bit of exploring around Auckland today. Thought a good place to start would be the museum for a bit of history.

The museum is in a parkland called the Auckland domain which is full of interesting little gardens like the 'Wintergarden' with greenhouses full of flowers and plants.

The Auckland museum


The galleries explain well how the Polynesian culture developed and spread over the centuries reaching the Tonga/Samoa islands in 1200BC through all if the pacific islands to finally arrive in New Zealand in 1000AD.
Artefacts from Papua new guinea. Wood sculpture and elaborate architecture main forms of their artistic expression.
Mostly decoration expressed on their bodies on special occasions such as warfare, inter-clan festivals and 'periodic pig festivals.' Many wore plumes and feathers to impersonate birds of paradise.
Beautifully carved musical instruments from Melanesia which were used to increase magical power and to represent the voices of the ancestors.
Beautiful dance jewellery,any filled with the teeth, bones and claws of different animals. Fish hooks, some made with lengths of pearl shell to
Mimic the shimmer of a little fish or eels I guess.
Samoan, Fijian, Tonga exhibits shown.
Fijian culture combines both Melanesia and Polynesian features.
Lots of war spears and Red feather money. Raw material for Maori technology were the natural products of the land and sea which were shaped by practical need and creative skill. Stone also important raw material - tools, weapons, ornaments. New Zealand, wide range of sedimentary and volcanic stone materials.
Stone azres - blades for cutting tools.


Marriage decoration. Marriages were seen in the pacific societies as alliances between groups of families rather than the joining of two people.
Many initiation rites for men to gain the secrets of special male knowledge about ancestors and their rituals. Childbirth left to the women. Young girls given many domestic duties very early and boys a lot if freedom to play. But the play would tend to relate to practicing hunting and warfare skills that would be their later duties. Many charms worn for control of powers of the supernatural world.
Ancestors are seen as links back to the gods.

Pacific islanders learnt to navigate long distances over open water without the use of navigational tools, instead using ancestral knowledge about winds, wave patterns etc. Accumulated over the generations.

Saw a real-life Maori performance. Obviuosly put on to create a touristy 'Moari Experience' the show was still pretty impressive. The performers did their traditional dances and sang old songs. The girls doing their dances swinging large balls at the end of rope was impressive and the guys did their their war dances and the whole lot finished the show with a full-blown Haka.

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