Students learn Maori traditions

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The Marae is the focal point of Maoirdom in any New Zealand community. It's a building or series of buildings in which Maori spiritual and moral values are celebrated and preserved. It is sacred to the living and a memorial to the dead. Typically, the marae consists of the whare kai (the dining hall) and the whare nul (the big house or the house of learning). Within the whare nul the presence of generations of departed souls is tangible. Photographs adorn the walls to remind the living of their ancestors.

In February, 35 senior Bream Bay College students, located on the Pacific coastline in the far north of New Zealand's North Island, gathered at the Ngatiwai Marae to attend a leadership camp organized by the Ngatiwai Wananga Raorao Foundation. The weekend was organized so that students experienced a range of activities based on and around the ocean and in the forest, and so that they learned the disciplines necessary to make communal living enjoyable and comfortable.

Through the korero (the speech or teaching) of their tutors, students were introduced to, and encouraged to think about, the essential principles that guide Maori in their thinking and in their actions: tlka (correctness and truth in speech), pono (living and upholding the necessary protocols), aroha (the purpose for the direction of their energies), and mana (integrity and pride).

New Zealand was settled by Europeans following Captain James Cook's circumnavigation of the globe in 1769, but had been earlier discovered by wandering groups of Pacific islanders in approximately 900 AD and named Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by representatives of the British crown and of the Maori (tribes), is the legislative foundation stone of modern New Zealand, but this is under pressure and is being re-defined and re-interpreted.

The Bream Bay students, 75 per cent of whom are Pakeha (of European descent) and 25 per cent Maori, were welcomed onto the marae by the local Elders in a ceremony called a powhiri (I am intrigued by the closeness to the word powwow). Through korero (speech) and karakia (prayer), the visitors are challenged. This challenge was met by the korero of the kaumata (Elder) who had accompanied the party from Bream Bay. The powhiri concludes with the hongi, the final gesture of acceptance in which hosts and guests rub noses to share the same air, to share the same breath. This acceptance conveys upon the visitors membership of the local whanau, or extended family.

Having been accepted onto the marae, the whare nul became the students' dormitory. But it represented much more than that. It functioned as a debating chamber and seminar room. Or, as one of the Elders had earlier explained it, the whare becomes the whanau's university. Oratory and debate assume huge importance in Maori societies, issues and controversies are thrashed out and the carefully crafted words of the speeches are absorbed by the walls of the whare to add to the cultural legacy already present and in the act of being passed on to the future. The whare is a hallowed place and the students soon learned to respect this and to care for it.

The pantheon of Maori gods accommodates both the mythological and Christian, introduced by European missionaries in the last century. Students learned that Maori do very little without first offering a karakia, or prayer. In the forest, thanks were offered to Tane Mahuta, Lord of the Forest, and his indulgence sought as students were taught to respect the sanctity of the bio-diversity evident there and to value the medicinal riches available in each tree and plant in the ocean. The protection of Tangaroa, God of the Sea, was invoked before kayaking and snorkelling put the students, individually and collectively, at the mercy of the waters. At the meal table Jesus Christ was thanked for nature's bounty.

The protocols and disciplines of the weekend demanded that each student maintain focus upon priniples precious, not only to Maori, but also to sensitive peoples throughout the world - self-respect, respect for others, respect for the miracle of nature and the absolute necessity that we do nothing to harm its vital balance.

If young New Zealanders, irrespective of race, can adopt those principles in their role as leaders of the future, then the ancestral spirits of the marae will have been richly honored.