The Marae in Kaikoura

I went on a field trip this past weekend with my Science, Maori and Indigenous Knowledge to a Maori marae. A marae is a place that is sacred to a Maori iwi (tribe). It is situated on the traditional land of the iwi and serves as a gathering place and a meeting place. The one we stayed at was used for everything from a primary school for the iwi to a site for weddings and funerals to a place to welcome visitors onto the iwi's land. We stayed for two nights, and I wish I could describe everything we saw and learned and did, but I'm pretty sure you'd fall asleep before you finished reading it all, so for now I'll just start with the welcoming ceremony. On a side note, I have no pictures of the trip because the marae is tapu (sacred) and it is considered quite rude to take pictures without written consent from the iwi.

Anyway, the welcoming ceremony was quite interesting. It is supposed to start with the visitors gathering outside the gates and waiting, to show that they are ready to be welcomed to the marae. There is then supposed to be a wero, which means that the hosts lay down a spear, dart, or twig as a challenge and one of the male visitors picks it up. The way it is picked up indicates whether or not the visitors have come peacefully or for war. It's also very important not to smile during the wero, because the host who is issuing the challenge might think you are making fun of his challenge and it would be very insulting. Once the guests have accepted the challenge and picked up the twig peacefully, one of the female hosts starts the karanga, which is a call/song. The eldest female visitor will answer the karanga, and everyone will go in a procession (older women first, then younger women, and all the men have to go in the back) into the marae and then into the wharenui (which translates roughly as the "big house" and is the most important building/room within the marae). We spent a lot of time prepping for this part of the welcoming ceremony so that we wouldn't mess it up and insult someone, but we didn't actually do anything I just described, because it was raining and no one wanted to stand out in the rain. Instead, someone greeted us in the parking lot and showed us in the back door, and we all just walked inside the wharenui.

Once we were all inside the wharenui, however, we did continue with the rest of the traditional welcoming ceremony. Everyone took their shoes off before they went into the wharenui, because it is the most tapu (sacred) part of the marae. The whole inside of the wharenui was completely covered with intricate and traditional Maori carvings, each representing a story. I'll try to describe some of it some other time. Anyway, once we were inside, we all sat down, the hosts on one side and the visitors on the other. The seating order is supposed to be elders males in the front, because they give speeches, and then younger males and all the women in the back. However, there was actually only one host greeting us, a man named Tai. He made a speech in Te Reo Maori (the Maori language) and followed it with a song, and then the visitors were supposed to make a speech and follow their speech with a song. One of the students on the trip was actually a Te Reo Maori major at the university, so he was able to make a speech on our behalf, and we had all practised a Maori song to follow the speech (although I have to admit that it was a call-and-repeat song...) Then the student who made the speech laid down the koha (gift) on the floor between the guests and the hosts. Traditionally, the koha would have been resources that were valuable or important from the land of the visitors, but now it is usually money, so our koha was just an envelope that we each put a few dollars into. After that, the division between the hosts on one side of the room and the guests on the other side is supposed to be symbolically broken for the first time, so we each shook Tai's hand and pressed noses (I think I mentioned before that pressing noses is a traditional Maori greeting, and it's a bit strange at first, but it's not actually as awkward as it sounds, provided that the other person isn't giggling).

For the final part of the welcoming ceremony, we all left the wharenui and went to the kitchen for tea and cookies. It sounds fairly ordinary, but there are actually a couple of things that are important. Firstly, because the wharenui is tapu, you aren't allowed to eat or drink inside it, because those are acts of the more mundane physical world. Secondly, the act of eating the hosts' food lifts the division between the hosts and the guests. Also, the food would traditionally have been the delicacies of the area (for example, the iwi of the marae we visited were renowned for the crayfish along their coastline). Now, however, the food served is usually tea and cookies and such things, which is what we had.

(On a side note, tea was actually a very good representation of the food we ate while we were at the marae. We literally had five meals a day, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and tea- tea meaning dinner- and every single meal involved at least two cups of tea. I don't think I've ever drunk so much tea in my life, which is saying something coming from me. Not that I'm complaining, by any means!!!)

Anyway, that was the welcoming ceremony. I'm now going to steal the idea from Tori's post to be indecisive and just throw some ideas out, so let me know if anything sounds interesting enough that you'd like to hear more about it. There were the panels on the walls inside the wharenui and the stories behind them (as best as I can remember them), the work we did while we were there (mostly reseeding the bay with abalone, using a really cool mix of scientific methods and traditional methods), or random bits of Maori culture that I learned a bit about over the weekend (including a children's game, a few words, and a lot more about whakapapa).

Oh, and Kaikoura is the name of the town where the marae is, located two or three hours drive north of Christchurch and on the ocean. It's really pretty there!